U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett said at a recent event that she welcomes public scrutiny of the court, but that individual justices are under more of a spotlight than in previous generations.
Because of the internet and social media, the public now knows the faces of the individual justices.
“People just didn’t recognize who the justices were” before the internet, Justice Barrett said during a judicial conference in Wisconsin on Monday. “I think that’s better. I don’t think justices should be recognizable in that sense.”
Justice Barrett noted that there are both good and bad aspects of the Supreme Court being in the news frequently.
“To the extent that it engages people in the work of the court and paying attention to the court and knowing what the courts do and what the Constitution has to say, that’s a positive development,” she said. “To the extent that it gives them misimpressions—that’s a negative development.”
Such decisions include ending Roe v. Wade, rejecting the Biden administration’s push for student loan forgiveness, and striking down race-based admissions in higher education.
Term Limits
In June, Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Don Beyer (D-Va.) reintroduced the “Supreme Court Term Limits and Regular Appointments Act” seeking to establish 18-year term limits for supreme court justices.“Our Founding Fathers intended for lifetime appointments to ensure impartiality. The decision today demonstrates how justices have become partisan and out of step with the American public,” Mr. Khanna said in a statement referring to the ruling against student debt forgiveness.
Justice Barrett spoke about alleged partisanship in the Supreme Court in September 2021 during a lecture hosted by the University of Louisville’s McConnell Center.
She insisted that the media’s reporting of judicial opinions failed to capture the deliberation involved in reaching such conclusions.
“Judicial philosophies are not the same as political parties,” she said at the time. “To say the court’s reasoning is flawed is different from saying the court is acting in a partisan manner.”
“I think we need to evaluate what the court is doing on its own terms,” she said.
Justice Barrett has also addressed the personal scrutiny that comes with the job.
Public View of SCOTUS, Partisanship
Public perception about the U.S. Supreme Court has been mixed in recent times according to multiple polls.
About 51 percent of Americans say the Supreme Court has the right amount of power, but 4 in 10 say the court has too much power. Just 7 percent say the court has too little power, according to a Pew Research Center report.
Over 50 percent of Americans also agreed that the Supreme Court should have the power to throw out any law it considers to be unconstitutional. Only 34 percent of Democrats held such a view while 51 percent of independents and 73 percent of Republicans agreed.
The YouGov poll found that 73 percent of Democrats see the Supreme Court as more conservative than the American public in general, up from 61 percent in March, while 48 percent of Republicans think the court’s opinions are in line with the general public, up from 32 percent in March.
In June while reintroducing the “Supreme Court Term Limits and Regular Appointments Act,” Mr. Beyer had said that “recent partisan decisions by the Supreme Court that destroyed historic protections for reproductive rights, voting rights, and more have undermined public trust in the Court.”
Prior to former President Donald Trump appointing Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, the court sided with Democrat positions on several matters. This includes a controversial 2015 decision in the Obergefell v. Hodges case where the court ruled that states had to license and recognize same-sex marriages.
Leftist activists have rallied against conservatives like Justice Barrett.
