The Supreme Court Needs Real Oversight
A series of recent events at the Supreme Court threatens to undermine trust and confidence in the institution and demonstrates the need for it to have a code of ethics and for better oversight within the judiciary.
In May, in what Chief Justice John Roberts called a “betrayal” and an “egregious breach of … trust,” a draft of the Dobbs opinion overruling Roe v. Wade was leaked. More recently, The New York Times reported that the results of a 2014 Supreme Court decision may also have been leaked. And Justice Clarence Thomas’s decision not to recuse himself, without any explanation, in rulings related to his wife’s actions has raised additional concerns.
These incidents and how the Court polices itself—or fails to police itself—place the public’s confidence in the judiciary at further risk. Trust in the Supreme Court has recently. According to a this past summer, only 25 percent of U.S. adults say they have “a great deal” or “quite a lot of” confidence in the Court. This is a decline of more than 11 points in the , and since Gallup began its survey 50 years ago.
