The Supreme Court Has a Legitimacy Problem—But Washington’s Monopoly on Power Is the Real Crisis

Americans disagree on much, but a new poll shows we agree on this: we don’t trust the Supreme Court. According to the latest Navigator survey, confidence in the Court is at rock bottom, especially among younger voters, women, and independents. Large numbers support term limits and ethical reforms. Even Republicans — the group with the most reason to cheer a conservative Court — are losing confidence in its direction.

The news media and political pundits’ natural tendency is to treat this as a story about partisan appointments or the latest scandal. But the problem goes beyond a single court or a single controversy. It reflects a deeper Constitutional breakdown: too much power has been nationalized, concentrated, and funneled into a handful of institutions that voters no longer see as accountable.

The Court isn't failing alone. For many Americans, the entire structure of nationalized governance is collapsing under its own weight.

This poll is simply the latest reminder.

How the Court Lost the Middle of the Country

At one level, the data are straightforward. Most Americans believe the Court is out of touch with everyday life. Majorities back term limits, stronger ethics rules, and more transparency. Support falls along partisan lines: Republicans are more trusting; Democrats and independents overwhelmingly are not.

But a deeper, more troubling pattern stands out: trust in nearly every national institution, including Congress, the presidency, federal agencies, and now the Court, has plummeted. Ironically, the more national politics has become like a high-stakes, winner-take-all contest, the less faith Americans place in the institutions that run it.

All this was predictable: when national power becomes winner-take-all, people who lose the national fight disengage or grow resentful. That’s just human nature.

How We Got Here: The Vertical State, the Imperial Court, and the Loss of Local Power

The Court was never meant to be the be-all and end-all of policymaking. But because Congress has surrendered its lawmaking capacity and presidents have hoarded more unilateral authority, the judiciary has become the final arbiter on nearly everything from reproductive rights to immigration to elections.

If you want to know why the Court is at the center of a legitimacy crisis, start with this structural fact: Too much of American life is decided many miles away by nine people with lifetime appointments.

The Constitution’s Supremacy Clause says that when the Court rules, the ruling applies everywhere. A highly centralized national politics increasingly treats those rulings as existential. The losing side never gets breathing room. There are no safety valves, no alternative venues, no horizontal paths for policy diversity. The losers must seek redress from the same court that struck down the law.

The result is predictable—every Supreme Court nomination becomes the equivalent of trench warfare. Every ruling becomes do-or-die. Every institutional norm becomes a casualty of partisan combat.

The Supreme Court Shouldn’t Be the Only Thing That Matters

Concentrating all power into a handful of national institutions is dangerous and inefficient. Authority should be shared across different parts of society rather than concentrated in one place. States, cities, and local governments need real power instead of leaving everything to the federal government. Decisions should come from many sources so that no single institution can block progress. Policies should allow room for local solutions as the Founders intended, instead of trying to impose sweeping national fixes. Legitimacy must grow from the bottom up, not be handed down from the top. There's a reason why states are called “laboratories of democracy.”

How Reforms Would Work in a More Balanced Republic

The real solution starts with sharing power more broadly. State Supreme Courts should handle more constitutional questions within their own borders. Not every issue needs an immediate, uniform national answer. Congress needs to reclaim its role as the branch that actually makes laws, but partisan gridlock has paralyzed it. Instead of writing clear statutes, lawmakers often leave gaps that the Court is forced to fill. This dysfunction pushes more power toward the judiciary, making every decision feel like a national showdown.

A healthier system would let states try different approaches rather than imposing a single model from Washington, but that requires a Congress willing to act instead of engaging in endless partisan combat. And local governments should matter again. City councils, school boards, and state legislatures should feel relevant to people’s lives. When that happens, the Supreme Court stops being a life-or-death institution. Court reforms like term limits and ethics rules still matter, but their purpose should be to reduce national escalation, not to reset the same old fight.

If we want to restore trust—not just in the Court, but in democracy—the answer isn’t to make Washington bigger or louder. It’s to make the rest of the country matter again. A distributed republic lowers the temperature by spreading decision-making across many institutions. It makes disagreement survivable. It returns policymaking to the places where people actually live. Until we fix the structure, Americans will keep distrusting the Court—and the presidency, and Congress, and everything else we’ve crammed into a vertical, zero-sum national cage match. The poll doesn’t just tell us the Court is in trouble. It tells us the republic is asking for a different kind of architecture: a distributed one. One based on the core principles of our constitution.

Robert Cropf is a Professor of Political Science at Saint Louis University.