盖洛普民调：美最高法院支持率降至33%历史新低

This is Bloomberg Law with June Graasso from Bloomberg Radio. In recent years, the Supreme Court has gotten what you might call bad grades from the public, and it's gotten worse since the last term. Americans are now more displeased with the court than at any time in the last 26 years. According to the latest Gallup poll, only 33% of the public approves of the job the Supreme Court is doing, a record low. Joining me is Bloomberg Supreme Court reporter Greg Store.

Greg, tell us about the latest polls.

There were several new polls that came out after the court's term ended, and by far the worst of them was the Gallup poll that showed the Supreme Court's approval rating plummeting to 33%. That is easily the lowest since Gallup started surveying about the court in 2001. The number went down 9 percentage points from 42% when they took it in September. So really a big decline there. The other polls were not as stark, but for example, a Marquette Law School poll showed the court down two percentage points from a year earlier.

So, it's consistent with the notion that at best the Supreme Court is treading water.

In the Gallup poll, was it a slide among Republicans that brought that number down?

It was a slide mostly among Republicans. The court's approval ratings were already really low among Democrats and independents. But among Republicans, support dropped 21 percentage points since September. It was 79% in September, fell to 58%. With a plus or minus margin of error of four percentage points, that's definitely a big big drop.

A huge drop. And you would think that the way the Supreme Court ruled this term on Republican priorities like narrowing agency power, enhancing gun rights, eliminating campaign spending restrictions. The Republicans would be happy with the court. Well, one big reason sure seems to be Donald Trump and the way he's reacted. The court, of course, ruled against him on a couple big issues, including tariffs and his ability to fire Lisa Cook and his birthright citizenship restrictions.

And Donald Trump was extremely aggressive, lashing out at even those justices he appointed like Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch. If you recall, after the tariff decision, he said, among other things, that they are an embarrassment to their families. So, Republicans of course do respond very strongly across the board to things Donald Trump says and sure seems like his criticisms of the Supreme Court drag the court down with Republicans.

Tell us about some of the factors that have made this Supreme Court so unpopular with Democrats and independents.

There have been a lot of forces over the years that have been dragging the court down. This is not just a one-year thing. This has been happening over the course of a couple of decades. And of course, we're seeing institutions in general have their approval ratings falling. But you have a combination of a court that seems more partisan, and indeed they are more partisan in the sense that it's the Republican justices who are now the most conservative and the Democratic justices who are the most liberal.

You have things like the ethical controversies that we had a few years ago that were very much in the news. Clarence Thomas accepting trips uh paid for by a Republican mega donor. You have the way the court acquired this conservative supermajority with Republicans holding one seat open after Antinine Scalia died and then rushing to fill another one when Ruth Bader Ginsburg died. So there's kind of a perfect storm. Oh, I haven't even mentioned overturning Roie Wade, which obviously was a decision that was highprofile and among many people extremely unpopular.

So a combination of factors have kind of gotten us to this point. So there were two decisions where the Supreme Court went against President Trump on the tariffs and birthright citizenship in the sea of decisions where they, you know, helped move forward his agenda on the regular docket and on the shadow docket. Some people are pointing to that, even Justice Kagan are pointing to those two as well. We're holding the line here.

Well, I did think that Justice Kagan's remarks this summer were very interesting because after the ruling that overturned Roie Wade three years ago, she pretty much called into question the court's legitimacy in a couple public appearances, saying that when the court is overturning cases isn't being consistent, that it can call into question its own legitimacy. So, the fact that she was in at least in some sense standing up for the court this summer, I did think was notable.

Having said that, she was very strongly in descent from a number of the decisions you mentioned where the conservative majority uh moved the law in a particular direction in a way that conservatives have been hoping for for quite a long time.

Is anybody else buying that argument that, you know, oh well, we held the line on these two cases where if they hadn't held the line, it would have been shocking. You know, Jude, I I hate to say this as somebody who covers the Supreme Court, spends all my waking hours or at least my work hours thinking about how to communicate what the Supreme Court is doing. But the truth is, a lot of Americans don't pay attention to what the Supreme Court is doing unless it's one of these mega cases like overturning Roie Wade or deciding a presidential election or something like that.

So, you know, people often have impressions of the court. They've heard a little bit. If you look at these polls, it's kind of remarkable how little people have heard about some cases that I think everybody's heard about, first rate, citizenship, tariffs, things that you you mentioned. Uh so, you know, what people think of the court may be in a lot of cases more impressionistic than something that is really tied to particular decisions that that came out.

And in your story, you write that the justices have said in public that they don't consider polls.

Yeah. They've said that over and over in a variety of different contexts. So, one thing I mentioned in the story was in the Dobs ruling which overturned Roie Wade. Uh, Justice Alo mentioned that the, as he put it, the judicial branch derives its legitimacy not from following public opinion, but from deciding by its best lives whether legislative enactments of the popular branches of government comport with the Constitution.

Other justices have said similar things. On the other hand, we discussed Justice Kagan talking about the court's legitimacy. The court and I would venture to say all the justices understand that their legitimacy is really important as a country, as a republic. We need people, both average people and other members of the government to accept Supreme Court decisions even if they don't agree with them. We need people to be like Al Gore who can say after the Bush v.Gore your decision.

I disagree strongly, but I accept it. Otherwise, you know, we run the risk of chaos where despite what the Supreme Court says, people say we are going to go off in our own direction, interpret the Constitution our own way.

I know they say that they don't care about the polls in public, but I have this feeling like some of them must be a little bit upset about the fact that they're at record lows and that, you know, the public is seeing them as politicians in robes. I mean they come out and defend themselves and you see you know Justice Roberts trying to emphasize the number of unanimous decisions and also talk about we don't overturn president as much as some past justices.

I mean it seems like they're doing a lot of explaining. It is certainly the case that if you went to any of the nine of them and said you're acting like a politician, they would uh tell you in very strongly worded terms why they don't think they're a politician, why they are just interpreting statutes and interpreting the Constitution the way they think they should be interpreted.

I am puzzled by one of t