From Gallup. A similar pattern characterizes feelings toward John Roberts.
by John Sides on July 16, 2012 · 3 comments
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
The Supreme Court Justices are the bunch of guys who is most independent of public opinion. Even if they had an approval rating of 0 %, it would not change a thing. Insofar, this is a rather moot observation.
Also, if the judiciary would always need to decide in line with public opinion, the institution of judicial review and thus the separation of powers would become pointless.
Interesting, the % with no opinion went down for every group. Not sure that should be considered progress, though!
It’s clear the Citizens United rulling (with its unfortunate [in the eyes of liberals] from Union powers to lobby, etc.) pleased conservatives, if for no other rational reason than it threw a hallowed tenet of working-class political (and mainly Democratic) rhetoric back in the face of their oponents. (“Ha ha. Take that!) Fun for the masses and conservative cadres and unprecedented opportunity for big-bucks power brokers incidently. Or maybe not so incidently.
Think though the ACA decision numbers reflected this July are a different animal. Millions of Americans (and despite Citizens United they still outnumber the newly minted citizen-like entities confurmed by SCOTUS) sense a deeper and more personal dimension to the ACA that will persist when other hot-button issues fall off the screen.
In other words, caring about ACA is more profound than Citizens United, for better or for worse.