The Annenberg Public Policy Center reported a 25% drop in the public's trust of the over the 20 years.
Credit: Gabriel JungA recent report from the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania found that American trust in the federal judiciary has fallen 25% in the past 20 years.
The report — titled “The Withering of Public Confidence in the Courts” — was published in the magazine Judicature this year and delved into the reasons behind the decline and its implications. The leading statistic — reported by APPC research analyst Shawn Patterson Jr., Stephen and Mary Baran Chair in the Institutions of Democracy of the APPC Matthew Levendusky, APPC Managing Director of Survey Research Ken Winneg, and APPC director Kathleen Hall Jamieson — is present despite the judiciary historically garnering more public trust than the legislative and executive branches of the federal government.
“Between 2019 and 2022, there was a considerable drop in trust, with only 46 percent of U.S. adults having a ‘fair amount’ or ‘great deal’ of trust in the United States Supreme Court in 2022 compared to 68 percent in 2019,” the report reads. “This drop in trust occurred primarily among Democrats and those who do not identify with the two major parties. Meanwhile Republican trust in the Court only fell from 76 percent in 2019 to 70 percent in 2022.”
To measure support, the researchers asked two kinds of questions: the degree to which respondents agreed or disagreed with three statements related to judicial independence and the degree to which they support or oppose three possible reform proposals that decrease the power of judges.
“It had long been the case that ‘to know courts is to love them’,” Patterson, the lead author of the report, told Penn Today. “But the relationship between civics knowledge and trust in the Supreme Court has changed. Those most knowledgeable about the Court are now the least trusting of its ability to serve the people’s interest.”
The report summarizes that public trust in the overall federal judiciary — and the Supreme Court specifically — has declined over the past few decades.
“While civics knowledge continues to be associated with trust in the federal judiciary as a whole, that relationship has not only declined, but reversed for the U.S. Supreme Court — that is, more knowledgeable respondents are now less trusting in the U.S. Supreme Court,” the report reads.
In the takeaways section of the report, the researchers highlighted three main mechanisms of restoring faith in the judiciary: commitment to democratic norms, exposure to legitimizing symbols, and confidence in the judicial process.
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