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Respect for the rule of law in the United States can hardly be helped by the fact that so many Americans don't know what it means. Last year's annual civics survey by the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center found that one-third of our countrymen couldn't name all three branches of government -- and almost 1 in 5 couldn't name one. It's tough to summon opposition to the undermining of the rule of law among those who don't know the difference between checks and balances and, say, Chubby Checker.

The crumbling of trust in the very civic institutions that we have always assured ourselves would safeguard the rule of law should be one of the major stories of our time, yet that crumbling is happening month by month before our very eyes, with likely irreversible effect but very little fanfare. The federal government, including Congress, and the free press are certainly objects of the mistrust, but they have just as certainly helped generate it.

Then there's the U.S. Supreme Court, the institution most crucial not merely to upholding the rule of law but to requiring it. The court, too, has lost the trust of most Americans. A recent Annenberg Center survey found that 34% say they trust our nation's highest court "not at all," while another 22% say they trust it only "a little." The 44% of Americans who say they trust the court is the lowest since the center began surveying in 2005. At that point the figure was 75%.

Like other institutions, the court has helped do this to itself. In the last several years alone, the court jettisoned its own half-century old precedent protecting the Constitutional right of women to decide whether or not to carry a baby in their own bodies to term. It has walked back 100-year-old precedent providing that Congress (one of those branches that too many Americans can't name) has the power to investigate the head of the executive branch (another one). And last year, in a decision that flatly declares that the president of the United States actually is above the law, the court effectively held that the president can commit whatever crimes he desires out of whatever criminal motivation he may have and be immune from prosecution for them, even after he has left office.

Small wonder why the court finds itself in such disrepute.

But wait. There's more.

Last week, following a 20-month investigation, the Senate Judiciary Committee released a report detailing what it describes as the Supreme Court's "ethical crisis of its own making." Many of the basic facts have been uncovered by intrepid reporting made even more challenging by the lack of transparency of the culpable justices and the stonewalling of their patrons, but they are nonetheless stomach-turning.

Justice Clarence Thomas, for instance, failed to disclose a number of lavish personal gifts bestowed upon him by mega-wealthy benefactors, including private yacht and jet trips and other financial support. Payments to Thomas' wife for her role in fraudulent efforts to "stop" the "steal" of the 2020 election did not stop Thomas from hearing cases relating to that very issue. Prominently displayed "Stop the Steal" paraphernalia at Justice Samuel Alito's house likewise did not stop him from participating in cases adjudicating claims about the election. He likewise failed to disclose luxury gifts, according to the committee, in violation of law. "Whether failing to disclose lavish gifts or failing to recuse from cases with apparent conflicts of interest," the Committee concluded, " ... the highest court in the land can't have the lowest ethical standards."

Trouble is, the Supreme Court has no enforceable code of conduct, and there's no mechanism for investigating any justice's ethical breaches. The court itself refuses to establish either. That means -- that's right -- that the nation's tribunal charged with protecting the rule of law declines to be bound by it.

The good news is that the Supreme Court knows what checks and balances are. It just chooses to be neither checked nor balanced.

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Jeff Robbins' latest book, "Notes From the Brink: A Collection of Columns about Policy at Home and Abroad," is available now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books and Google Play. Robbins, a former assistant United States attorney and United States delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, was chief counsel for the minority of the United States Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. An attorney specializing in the First Amendment, he is a longtime columnist for the Boston Herald, writing on politics, national security, human rights and the Mideast.

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