Editorial: Eroding trust in the courts can be solved at the voting booth

The Philadelphia Inquirer Editorial Board, The Philadelphia Inquirer on Dec 30, 2024

Published in Op Eds

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A new Gallup poll shows Americans have about as much confidence in our legal system as people living in democracy-challenged nations like Syria, Venezuela, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. That’s a shame but also understandable given how politicized our courts have become, and how too many judges have questionable ethics.

Americans’ overall confidence in the justice system dropped to a record-low 35% in 2024. That’s a 24 percentage point drop in just the past four years. Gallup said a record-setting “double whammy” also had occurred. For the first time in its polling, confidence in our courts was below 50% both among those who approve and those who disapprove of the nation’s current political leadership.

“There is a perception that the judiciary has become inexorably politicized,” said University of Chicago law professor Tom Ginsburg. Sounds like a pretty reasonable perception.

What else should people think after witnessing an indicted candidate for president leverage his status to delay trials until serious allegations that might have prevented him from ever taking office were rendered moot?

For keeping open that door to the White House, President-elect Donald Trump can thank a U.S. Supreme Court larded with justices he appointed during his first term. The court’s nebulous ruling that a former president may be immune from prosecution for some crimes committed while in office, without specifying which crimes, essentially gave Trump a Get Out of Jail Free card.

Trump’s legal maneuvers further alienated those who were already upset by the Supreme Court’s decision in 2022 to overturn Roe v. Wade, its 1973 ruling that protected most abortions. According to polling, self-identified Democrats’ trust in the high court dropped from 50% to 25% between 2021 and 2022, went back up to 34% in 2023, then fell back to 24% this year.

By contrast, those identifying as Republicans saw their trust in the court increase from 61% to 67% between 2021 and 2022 and jumped to 71% in 2024.

Too many judges’ poor ethics add to Americans’ misgivings about our criminal justice system. It doesn’t help to have a Supreme Court justice whose black robe might as well be adorned with sequins that spell out For Sale. Justice Clarence Thomas had to be shamed by news reports, led by a ProPublica investigation, into finally admitting that for decades he has accepted gifts from so-called friends, including billionaire Harlan Crow, who could have used that relationship to influence his judicial opinions.

About as bad as Thomas when it comes to ethics is Justice Samuel Alito, whose conduct suggests he was never an unbiased participant in court cases concerning Trump’s lie that he won the 2020 presidential election. Flying an inverted flag became a uniting symbol for the MAGA faithful who insisted Joe Biden lost the election, so Alito blamed his wife for flying an upside-down American flag in their yard just days after the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection by Trump supporters.

Dysfunction at other levels of the criminal justice system is another reason America’s courts shouldn’t do well in polls. Something’s wrong when one of every three U.S. adults has been arrested, convicted, or incarcerated. Too many are locked up because they can’t afford competent legal representation. Too many commit new crimes after being freed because they can’t find work with a record. Too many who ought to be in jail aren’t because the cash bail system is broken.

The problem with public opinion polls is they rarely generate the level of action necessary to change what people don’t like. That’s why it is so important to participate in a way that can produce meaningful change in this country by going to the polls on Election Day.

Reforming the criminal justice system is almost always on the ballot, not just in elections for judicial offices but in choosing the people who appoint judges and fund law enforcement and the courts.

“Elections have consequences,” Barack Obama famously said to Republicans after becoming president in 2009. Words that came back to haunt him in 2015 when Democrats lost control of both the House and Senate. Trump will enter office with both chambers of Congress in his control. But it’s unlikely he will urge reform of a legal system that, thanks to his appointments, has mostly served him well.

We can expect more bad poll results for America’s courts until the public finally votes people into office who will make justice for all a higher priority.

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