New Poll Shows Americans — Even Republicans — Think The Supreme Court Needs To Be Reined In

A new poll from Verasight dropped this week, and its findings should be a wake-up call for everyone currently pretending the Supreme Court’s legitimacy crisis is a partisan fever dream. Short version: it isn’t.

We’ve been tracking the Court’s legitimacy crisis for years now, and the numbers keep getting grimmer. Registered voters with “a great deal” or “quite a bit” of faith in the Supreme Court is down to a combined 22 percent. There are chronic diseases that poll better. The Verasight survey adds some new texture to that picture… and it is not flattering to the Court.

The data shows that 64% of Democrats and 47% of Republicans agree the United States needs stronger mechanisms for controlling the Court’s actions given its entanglement with partisan politics. Nearly half of Republicans! On a topic where the two parties currently agree on roughly nothing, you’ve got a near-majority of the president’s own voters saying the Court needs guardrails.

The Court being seen as a political institution is, of course, not news. As Justice Kagan put it in a 2022 speech, judges create legitimacy problems for themselves “when they stray into places where it looks like they’re an extension of the political process.” The Verasight poll suggests the public has absorbed that lesson more thoroughly than the Court itself has. We pointed out back in 2024 when polling showed 83% of respondents saying partisanship plays a role in the Court’s decisions at least some of the time.

Only 31% of Republicans — and a mere 7% of Democrats — told Verasight they believe the Court is “just fine the way it is.” So we have an institution beloved by roughly three in 10 members of the party that appointed its current supermajority, and barely one in 14 members of the opposing party. This is what institutional collapse looks like in survey form. We noted just last year that 67% of Republicans and only 26% of Democrats had a favorable view of the Court, and even those numbers showed a deeply troubled institution. Since then, the bottom has continued to fall out.

None of this is happening in a vacuum. A separate Strength In Numbers/Verasight poll earlier this year found 65% of Americans support 18-year term limits for the justices, including 61% of independents and 56% of Republicans. ATL’s own Joe Patrice has been making the case for term limits for years, and his most recent entry in that argument lays out why they represent the least dangerous and most necessary reform on offer. His core argument is that life tenure may have been a shield to insulate the Supreme Court from politics, but it’s a sword now and it’s destroying the Court’s legitimacy. And the momentum for reform is ramping up: Joe has noted that the forces arrayed against reform are getting nervous, a signal that something real is happening.

Listen, Americans — including a substantial number of Republicans — see a Court that has become a political institution, they don’t think that’s acceptable, and they want something done about it. The Verasight poll adds to an already voluminous record, one that Joe has been charting since before it was fashionable, that reform isn’t a fringe demand. It’s the obvious response to an obvious problem.

Earlier: After Years Of ‘Hold My Beer’ Moments, Supreme Court Confidence Hits New Low
Donald Trump Wants Everyone (But Him) To Respect The Supreme Court’s Legitimacy
Americans Know The Truth About The Supreme Court
Fox News Shows Just How Badly Americans Dislike The Supreme Court
Of Course The Supreme Court’s Approval Is In The Tank
The Supreme Court’s Sinking Popularity

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Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Bluesky @Kathryn1