Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Trust in the Supreme Court is waning. Reducing polarization can save it.

Supreme Court building
commons.wikimedia.org

Sally, host of the podcast “You Don't Have to Yell,” is director of digital strategy at Rank the Vote, an organization dedicated to promoting ranked-choice voting nationwide.

Americans expect the Supreme Court to rule objectively on the law, free of any partisan baggage. And Americans’ preferred strategy to make this happen is to pack the body with as many justices who think like them as possible.

We saw this dynamic in action during the final months of the Trump administration, when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell rushed to confirm Amy Coney Barrett. This led to cries of partisanship from the left and the creation of a commission on Supreme Court reform by President Biden in April 2021.

The commission released its findings earlier this month, covering the logistics around term limits for justices and expanding the court beyond its current nine members, but did not take a position on those options. While these reforms may have merit, all would be interpreted as further attempts to make the court more partisan and further reduce its credibility.


Still, with a recent poll by Gallup showing approval of the Supreme Court at the lowest level since polling began, it’s clear the issue of trust in the court needs to be addressed.

The real solution to restoring the court’s credibility lies in reforms that can reduce partisanship in government overall, as opposed to solely focusing on the judiciary.

How it started ...

The Supreme Court was designed to serve as a safeguard against the threat that wild swings in public opinion could pose to the rights of the minority. The Founders had good reason to fear this, given the last wild swing in public opinion resulted in a band of angry farmers defeating the world’s most powerful military to replace a monarch with a system of government most people had never heard of before.

Because the court was one of three equal branches of government, the early Americans had no problem with it being a highly partisan body. Later, Abraham Lincoln appointed his campaign manager to the court and worked with congressional Republicans to expand the body to make room for an additional pro-Union justice. Salmon Chase openly campaigned for a presidential nomination in 1868 while serving as chief justice.

Americans had little problem with this for two reasons:

First, Americans were more concerned with the court becoming too powerful, as opposed to whether it was too partisan. Unlike now, the Supreme Court at the time wasn’t viewed as the final arbiter of constitutionality, but part of a larger conversation around how far government authority should extend.

Second, partisanship was far more fluid than it is today. Parties were often related to a specific policy, driven locally and expected to die. If we look back to Lincoln’s expansion of the Supreme Court, it should be noted he appointed a pro-Union Democrat, as Lincoln was building a coalition for a new party in anticipation of an end to the GOP.

How it’s going ...

After the Civil War, political parties became much more static and the Supreme Court more powerful. While multiple parties played a part in American politics up through Theodore Roosevelt’s Bull Moose era in the early 1900s, their influence over the two major parties waned.

Meanwhile, the concept of judicial review gave way to judicial supremacy — giving the court far more power over its own docket and a far greater say in which laws are struck down.

With this increased power, the desire for justices to be nonpartisan became more important, and appointing blatant partisan allies gave way to picking justices from the judiciary.

Aside from the confirmation hearings of Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas in the 1980s, Supreme Court appointments were largely bipartisan affairs, with most justices being confirmed by a supermajority. Since the removal of the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees, confirmation of justices by the Senate has fallen largely across party lines.

How to fix it ...

The reforms considered by President Biden’s commission have their benefits but also come with unintended consequences. Proponents of expanding the court argue such a change would match the growth in the federal court system over the last century and would reduce the power of each individual justice, diluting the partisan influence of any one justice.

Those in favor of term limits argue the court would better reflect the partisan makeup of those they serve, as each president would get the same number of appointments per term.

These reforms come with their drawbacks, however. Expanding the number of justices on the court is a highly contentious issue and would only serve to increase accusations of partisanship. One study on term limits for Supreme Court justices showed they would incentivize the appointment of more partisan judges and result in legal instability.

A more obvious solution lies in attacking the hyperpartisanship that makes Supreme Court appointments such contentious affairs in the first place. As America’s two major parties have grown further apart and less likely to compromise, almost every important vote appears to fall along party lines.

A party-line vote on a Supreme Court justice is like serving as the nominating president’s campaign manager, as the voices of those on the other side of the aisle go unheard. Regardless of how the court rules, this in and of itself poses a crisis to the branch’s legitimacy.

The polarization of American politics is a direct result of our first-past-the-post electoral system, where a candidate only needs one more vote than second place person to win, as opposed to a true majority. In such systems, candidates are rewarded when they lean into the extremes of their party and demonize the other side, as opposed to seeking out the approval of the majority of voters.

Reforms such as ranked-choice voting have proven to reduce polarization in elections by requiring candidates to appeal to the majority of voters they wish to serve, as opposed to a winnable plurality of hardened partisans.

We can’t expect those serving on the Supreme Court to have more credibility than the elected officials who appoint them. By changing our elections to elect leaders who better reflect the people they serve, we can expect the court to change in kind.

Read More

Protecting the U.S. Press: The PRESS Act and What It Could Mean for Journalists

The Protect Reporters from Excessive State Suppression (PRESS) Act aims to fill the national shield law gap by providing two protections for journalists.

Getty Images, Manu Vega

Protecting the U.S. Press: The PRESS Act and What It Could Mean for Journalists

The First Amendment protects journalists during the news-gathering and publication processes. For example, under the First Amendment, reporters cannot be forced to report on an issue. However, the press is not entitled to different legal protections compared to a general member of the public under the First Amendment.

In the United States, there are protections for journalists beyond the First Amendment, including shield laws that protect journalists from pressure to reveal sources or information during news-gathering. 48 states and the District of Columbia have shield laws, but protections vary widely. There is currently no federal shield law. As of 2019, at least 22 journalists have been jailed in the U.S. for refusing to comply with requests to reveal sources of information. Seven other journalists have been jailed and fined for the same reason.

Keep ReadingShow less
Democrats Score Strategic Wins Amid Redistricting Battles

Democrat Donkey is winning arm wrestling match against Republican elephant

AI generated image

Democrats Score Strategic Wins Amid Redistricting Battles

Democrats are quietly building momentum in the 2025 election cycle, notching two key legislative flips in special elections and gaining ground in early polling ahead of the 2026 midterms. While the victories are modest in number, they signal a potential shift in voter sentiment — and a brewing backlash against Republican-led redistricting efforts.

Out of 40 special elections held across the United States so far in 2025, only two seats have changed party control — both flipping from Republican to Democrat.

Keep ReadingShow less
Policing or Occupation? Trump’s Militarizing America’s Cities Sets a Dangerous Precedent

A DC Metropolitan Police Department car is parked near a rally against the Trump Administration's federal takeover of the District of Columbia, outside of the AFL-CIO on August 11, 2025 in Washington, DC.

(Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

Policing or Occupation? Trump’s Militarizing America’s Cities Sets a Dangerous Precedent

President Trump announced the activation of hundreds of National Guard troops in Washington, D.C., along with the deployment of federal agents—including more than 100 from the FBI. This comes despite Justice Department data showing that violent crime in D.C. fell 35% from 2023 to 2024, reaching its lowest point in over three decades. These aren’t abstract numbers—they paint a picture of a city safer than it has been in a generation, with fewer homicides, assaults, and robberies than at any point since the early 1990s.

The contradiction could not be more glaring: the same president who, on January 6, 2021, stalled for hours as a violent uprising engulfed the Capitol is now rushing to “liberate” a city that—based on federal data—hasn’t been this safe in more than thirty years. Then, when democracy itself was under siege, urgency gave way to dithering; today, with no comparable emergency—only vague claims of lawlessness—he mobilizes troops for a mission that looks less like public safety and more like political theater. The disparity between those two moments is more than irony; it is a blueprint for how power can be selectively applied, depending on whose power is threatened.

Keep ReadingShow less
Democrats Need To Focus on Communication

Democrat Donkey phone operator

AI illustration

Democrats Need To Focus on Communication

The Democrats have a problem…I realize this isn’t a revelation, but I believe they’re boxed into a corner with limited options to regain their footing. Don’t get me wrong, the party could have a big win in the 2026 midterms with a backlash building against Trump and MAGA. In some scenarios, that could also lead to taking back the White House in 2028…but therein lies the problem.

In its second term, the Trump administration has severely cut government agencies, expanded the power of the Executive branch, enacted policies that will bloat the federal deficit, dismantled parts of the social safety net, weakened our standing in the world, and moved the US closer to a “pay for play” transactional philosophy of operating government that’s usually reserved for Third World countries. America has veered away from being the model emulated by other nations that aim to build a stable democracy.

Keep ReadingShow less