When the people distrust their highest court

Reason reports on a detailed Marquette Law School poll finding that public views of the Supreme Court are 'modestly negative,' while noting that most major recent decisions enjoy majority public support. I want to sit with that paradox for a moment, because it tells us something important — not about which side is winning, but about the condition of the institution itself.

A court whose rulings the public accepts, yet whose standing the public doubts, is a court whose authority rests on shakier ground than the case outcomes alone would suggest. Authority is not merely the power to decide; it is the habitual willingness of a free people to be bound by those decisions. When that willingness erodes, no string of correct verdicts can fully restore it. The decisions may be obeyed today out of convenience or inertia; they will not be honored tomorrow out of conviction.

I have observed — and I state this as inference from what I know of republican government, not as recollection of events after my own time — that when a court becomes visibly entangled with the fortunes of political factions, citizens begin to read its rulings as faction's victories rather than law's requirements. That is the slow poison. The remedy is not to reverse the rulings people happen to dislike. The remedy is conduct: the comportment of the justices, the transparency of their reasoning, and above all the avoidance of any appearance that the robe serves a party rather than the compact.

I would counsel those who celebrate the Court's recent decisions to resist the temptation to treat low institutional approval as a trivial matter — the grumbling of a losing side. A judiciary that half the citizenry views with suspicion is a weakened instrument for all, including those who prevail before it today. And I would counsel those who distrust the Court to channel that energy into the constitutional means provided: the appointment process, the legislative power to define jurisdiction where the Constitution permits, and the long, unglamorous work of civic persuasion.

The Supreme Court is not the Republic's master, but it is one of its essential guardians. When that guardian's reputation suffers, the Republic's safety is diminished. The Marquette poll, as Reason presents it, is not a verdict on any particular decision. It is a warning about something more durable than any single term's docket — the fragility of deference itself. Guard it accordingly.