A record low 25 percent of Americans have confidence in the Supreme Court: poll

© Provided by Business Insider The US Supreme Court is seen behind fences in Washington, DC, on May 11, 2022. Stefani Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images

• In a recently-released Gallup poll, only 25% of respondents had confidence in the US Supreme Court.
• While 13% of Democrats had confidence in the court in June, Republican confidence sat at 39%.
• The court last week overturned Roe v. Wade in one of the most important decisions in decades.

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Here’s what each Supreme Court justice said about Roe v. Wade before they were confirmed

The Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade decision on Friday.  The opinion was supported by five of the conservative judges on the court.  Here’s what every judge said about Roe v. Wade during their confirmation hearings. 

The Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in a 5-4 vote on Friday.

The opinion was written by Justice Samuel Alito and supported by conservative justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, three of whom were appointed by former President Donal Trump.

“Roe was egregiously wrong from the start,” Alito wrote in the opinion. “Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences. And far from bringing about a national settlement of the abortion issue, Roe and Casey have enflamed debate and deepened division.”

The justices’ previous statements on Roe v. Wade have come into sharp focus after the landmark reversal. Senators Susan Collins and Joe Manchin said they were misled by Kavanaugh and Gorsuch.

Here’s what each justice said at the time of their nomination.

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Brett Kavanaugh

Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh was nominated by GOP President Donald Trump and took his seat on October 6, 2018.

During his confirmation hearing, Kavanaugh said the decision was an “important precedent” that has been “reaffirmed many times.”

Kavanaugh has also said the ruling was “settled law,” but signaled he’d be open to overturning settled law, the Washington Post reported.

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GOP Sen. Susan Collins and Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin accused Kavanaugh of misleading them during his hearing.

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Neil Gorsuch

Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch was nominated by GOP President Donald Trump and took his seat on April 10, 2017.

Gorsuch, during his confirmation hearing, said Roe v Wade was a precedent that was reaffirmed in subsequent cases.

“So a good judge will consider it as precedent of the US Supreme Court worthy as treatment of precedent like any other,” Gorsuch said.

He stopped short of saying how he’d rule on abortion if a case was presented in front of him.

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Amy Coney Barrett

Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett was nominated by GOP President Donald Trump and took her seat on October 27, 2020.

During her confirmation hearing, she said she’d follow the rules of precedent on issues tied to Roe v Wade.

“What I will commit is that I will obey all the rules of stare decisis, that if a question comes up before me about whether Casey or any other case should be overruled, that I will follow the law of stare decisis, applying it as the court is articulating it, applying all the factors, reliance, workability, being undermined by later facts in law, just all the standard factors,” she said, according to The New York Times.

At the time, Barrett sent a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee revealing that she had signed off on a 2006 anti-abortion ad.

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John Roberts

Chief Justice John Roberts was nominated to the Supreme Court by GOP President George W. Bush and was appointed on September 29, 2005.

During his confirmation hearing, Roberts said the 1973 landmark decision was “settled as a precedent of the court.”

“I do think that it is a jolt to the legal system when you overrule a precedent. Precedent plays an important role in promoting stability and even-handedness,” he told the Senate at the time.

—American History TV (@cspanhistory) June 24, 2022

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Samuel Alito

Associate Justice Samuel Alito was nominated by GOP President George W. Bush and took his seat January 31, 2006.

During his confirmation Alito said Roe V Wade  was an “important precedent of the Supreme Court,” The Washington Post reported.

However, Alito stopped short of calling the ruling settled law. Alito has previously written a 1985 cover letter where opposed abortion.

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Clarence Thomas

Associate Justice Clarence Thomas was nominated to the Supreme Court by GOP President George H.W.  Bush and took his seat on October 23, 1991.

During his confirmation hearing, he refused to state his opinion on abortion and if Roe v Wade was properly decided, saying it would compromise his ability to impartially rule on similar cases.

“I think those of us who have become judges understand that we have to begin to shed the personal opinions that we have. We tend not to express strong opinions so that we are able to, without the burden or without being burdened by those opinions, rule impartially on cases,” he said, according to NPR.

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Sonia Sotomayor

Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor was nominated by Democratic President Barack Obama and took her seat on August 8, 2009.

During her confirmation hearing, Sotomayor said the ruling was “precedent and settled.”

—American History TV (@cspanhistory) June 24, 2022

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Stephen Breyer

Associate Justice Stephen Breyer was nominated by Democratic President Bill Clinton and took his seat August 3, 1994.

During his confirmation hearing, said he believed that the 1973 ruling “is settled law.”

“Roe v Wade is the law of this country at least for more than 20 years,” Breyer said in 1994.

—American History TV (@cspanhistory) June 24, 2022

A record low number of Americans in a new Gallup poll say they have confidence in the US Supreme Court.

Only 25 percent of respondents in the survey expressed “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the Supreme Court, compared to 40 percent of respondents in 2020 and 36 percent just last year.

Among Democrats, only 13 percent of respondents said they have confidence in the court — and that was before the blockbuster ruling which struck down Roe, the landmark 1973 decision that legalized abortion in the United States and afforded a constitutional right to the procedure.

The survey was conducted from June 1-20 and was completed before the court issued major rulings. The poll was released a day before Roe v. Wade was overturned.

While many progressives in the party have called on President Joe Biden to back expanding the size of the court, he has expressed opposition to such a proposal.

Activists and liberal lawmakers alike were deeply frustrated by former President Donald Trump’s ability to appoint Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, especially given then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s decision to block Merrick Garland’s 2016 nomination to the high court and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s 2016 election loss to Trump. (Garland is now the US Attorney General.)

Independents also remain largely unimpressed with the conservative-dominated panel, with only 25 percent of survey respondents expressing confidence in the court, down from 40 percent in 2021.

And despite the rightward shift in recent years, only 39 percent of Republicans expressed confidence in the high court this year, up slightly from 37 percent in 2021 but down significantly from 53 percent in 2020.

In recent years, legal experts have debated the issue of Supreme Court term limits.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll released in April 2021 revealed that 63 percent of Americans supported term limits for high court justices.

In the coming days, cases involving everything from climate change regulations to immigration will be decided, in what has been the most consequential Supreme Court session in decades.

At the conclusion of the current term, Associate Justice Stephen Breyer will retire from the high court after 28 years on the bench, to be replaced by Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson this summer.

The Gallup poll surveyed 1,015 adults from June 1 through June 20 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

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