Americans’ Ratings of the U.S. Supreme Court
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
by Joseph Carroll
Gallup uses two questions to gauge Americans’ perceptions of the United States Supreme Court: one that simply asks whether Americans approve or disapprove of the way the court is handling its job and another that asks them to assess the level of confidence they have in the court. Both measures recently showed declines in the public’s perceptions of the high court.
Supreme Court Approval Ratings
Americans are now more negative than positive in their views of the Supreme Court, with 42% approving and 48% disapproving of the job the court is doing in a late June poll. These ratings are the lowest that Gallup has recorded since it first asked this question in the late summer of 2000.
In polls conducted from 2000 through July 2003, roughly 6 in 10 Americans said they approved of the way the Supreme Court was handling its job. By September 2003, after Supreme Court rulings on controversial cases involving sodomy and affirmative action, the court's approval rating dropped to 52%. These results showed essentially no change in September 2004, when a slight majority of Americans, 51%, approved of the way the court was handling its job, and 39% disapproved.
The current results show a significant drop in the court’s approval rating among Republicans. In September 2004, 57% of Republicans said they approved of the way the Supreme Court was handling its job. This sentiment decreased by 13 percentage points in the latest poll. The decrease among independents was 10 points (52% in September 2004 to 42% in June 2005). At the same time, ratings of the court showed only a modest decrease among Democrats (44% to 40%).
Confidence in the Supreme Court
Every year, Gallup asks Americans to rate their level of confidence in various institutions in the country, including the U.S. Supreme Court. The latest update, taken from a May 23-26 Gallup Poll, finds that 41% of Americans say they have "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in the Supreme Court. This result is one of the lowest that Gallup has recorded since the question was first asked in 1973, and it is also lower than last year’s rating, when 46% of Americans expressed this level of confidence in the court.
Since 1973, confidence in the Supreme Court has ranged from a low of 39% in October 1991, around the time of the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings, to a high of 56% in May 1985 and September 1988. Since June 2001, ratings of the court have slowly and gradually declined. In 2001 and 2002, half of Americans (50%) said they had a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in the court. This decreased to 47% in 2003, then to 46% in 2004, and finally to 41% this year.
The current results show an almost identical decline in confidence ratings among Republicans, independents, and Democrats. Last year, 53% of Republicans expressed confidence in the Supreme Court, while 47% express that level of confidence now. Among Democrats, ratings fell from 47% to 42%, and among independents, ratings declined from 41% to 36%.