Below is my column in the New York Post challenging the narrative of the Supreme Court as hopelessly ideologically divided. As the Court heads into the October Session, it remains a court of consensus on the vast majority of cases. While this false narrative is central to the push to pack the Court, the statistics belie the claims of critics.
Here is the column:
The Supreme Court is once again under attack from those calling for packing, or even eliminating, the institution as hopelessly ideological and divided.
The Philadelphia Inquirer recently proclaimed that “The Supreme Court’s conservative majority keeps choosing ideology over impartiality.”
Other media outlets reported “devastating” polling showing the Court as unpopular and losing institutional respect.
It is all clearly alarming — despite being entirely untrue.
Looking at the actual rulings disproves the argument of a “biased” court.
The Court ruled unanimously in more than 44% of cases, slightly up from the prior year.
When you add the roughly 11% of opinions that were 8-1 and 6% that were 7-1 or 7-2, the rate of unanimous or nearly unanimous jumps to 62%.
In over 77% of cases, there was no ideological split in the resulting opinions.
While slightly up, the ideological split emphasized in the coverage is found in less than a quarter of the cases.
Now look at those supposed ideologically besieged liberal justices.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson had the lowest percentage in the majority in the last term.
However, she was still in the majority in 72% of cases.
Crossing the prez
Jackson even agreed with Justice Samuel Alito in 49% of the cases and with Justice Clarence Thomas in half of the cases.
The narrative also ignores major losses by the Trump administration in cases dealing with birthright citizenship, mail-in ballots, tariffs, the Federal Reserve Board members and even Trump’s personal defamation case.
Just this week, the court issued a ruling that President Trump called “a big loss for Republicans” in rejecting a mail-in ballot change for the next election.
Those cases saw conservatives voting with their liberal colleagues.
Indeed, Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and Justice Neil Gorsuch are generally viewed as “in play” in a variety of cases in creating mixed majorities.
Critics aren’t just wrong that the court is biased, it’s incorrect that the Supremes are particularly unpopular.
A recent Marquette Law School poll shows that the court remains slightly underwater in popularity — with 47% favor, 53% disfavor.
Not great, but those numbers are still more popular than Congress or the two major political parties.
The unpopularity of Congress hit a whopping 86% this year.
Gallup found that only 10% of the American people hold a favorable view of Congress.
Trump’s popularity stands at around 40%.
So the Supreme Court has the highest approval rate and is massively more popular than Congress.
Yet, these members want to trash the most popular institution among the three branches.
Plenty of unanimity
This term is shaping up as another blockbuster, with major cases on gun rights, parental rights, immigration, climate change and other issues.
Some cases will break along a 6-3 ideological divide, but many more will be decided by unanimity or mixed majorities, as in past years.
The problem is that many in the media and politics will continue to demonize the court for those cases upon which they disagree and ignore the many cases upon which most of the justices agree.
That includes exaggerated claims of the court “killing democracy.”
The move to pack the court is based on a long-standing radical agenda to change the constitutional system on the left.
The court is standing in the way and these figures know that it is not easy to get a free people to give up on protections for those freedoms.
They have to be very angry or very afraid.
As a result, the court will resume hearing cases in an atmosphere of rage directed at its institution.
But make no mistake about it.
This court continues to function as designed as a principled, independent institution.
On our 250th anniversary, we should celebrate, not demonize, our highest court.
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
Jonathan Turley is a law professor who teaches a class on the Constitution and the Supreme Court and is the best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
The purpose of delegitimizing SCOTUS is to make it possible to pack it so that it can become the tool of the government. This has been done in countless countries-read your history. If you’re not into reading, watch Judgement at Nuremburg.
I’m a boomer. I knew people who lived through the Third Reich and we studied their path to power intensively in school. I worked with people who fought Soviet tanks in Prague in a revolt against Soviet rule. But the seizure and corruption of the justice system is practiced by all authoritarian regimes. SCOTUS is supposed to be our defense against government over reach. Which might initially look good. The Revered Doctor Niemoeller’s first example of the oncoming Nazi terror was “First they came for the Communists. We understood this and supported it!”
You’re a boomer and won’t know anything about this world in 25 years. It’s the US in name and location only.
@Anonymous
The fact that you used the expression, ‘boomer’, pretty much automatically reveals your age and it’s subsequent mindset. Sorry, but I am not a ‘boomer’ and myself and those like me are never giving you anything resembling control. You will be a lost generation, and ironically, just like many of the ‘boomers’. You’ll be glad we did what we did one day, even if you are still bitter and broken at that time.
Work out your parental issue son your own time instead of projecting them onto society writ large like a five year-old. Take it up with your parents like an adult if you really have a grievance other than, ‘Waaa!!’ Life is hard!’.
Youngy! Got a new box of crayons?
Spot on…
Turley wrote, “On our 250th anniversary, we should celebrate, not demonize, our highest court.”
I completely agree but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t stop pointing out the nonsense from Jackson.
I’m hoping Dems keep running with their nakedly partisan “We disagree with the court so we want to change the rules to get our way” plan.
Even those that disagree with the court understand this is basically cheating our system and some are even ok with being labeled cheaters but most people I know would see this as a reprehensible power and control point, and it’s only because they are not be able to sway voters to their way of thinking lately. So this is their well thought out plan. I guess anarchists do vote, but pandering to them? Beyond the pale. I’m hoping every dem pol supports packing loudly. Defund the police anyone? anyone? crickets. These are the things those dem think tanks come up with.
Let’s not ignore that Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is a woke political hack that generally seems to vote with the social justice mob on their hot political topics. I think it’s reasonably fair to say that, in the cases where the court is not unanimous, you’ll find Jackson in opposition to the majority a vast majority of the time. She has written some opinions that are way out in left field.
Progressives would love to have a court full of woke hacks like Jackson, they gush over everything she says and writes.
Speaking of Justice Jackson woke hackery, here are a few good things to read regarding Justice Jackson and a few other Justices.
Let’s be honest; the progressive left’s push to pack the Supreme Court really began in 2016 in opposition to Donald Trump. They viewed the Supreme Court as their last defense to oppose Trump and their ultimate support to push their ideology; they didn’t get their way so pack the court became mainstream. Since Jackson was appointed to the court, Conservative leaning justices that happen to vote differently than Justice Brown are smeared as hacks and cries to pack the court with more “Jacksons” to push the left’s agenda have been front and center of politics.
The left will intentionally b-a-s-t-a-r-d-i-z-e any institution in their effort to push their agenda, the ends justifies the means to morally bankrupt people like that.
Steve Witherspoon, Justice Jackson is a lot smarter than you. Your emotional outbursts and irrational claims are baseless.
Justice Jackson has effectively used her colleagues philosophies, Originalism and Textualism to point out their hypocrisy.
how do you know that, X?
You have not proven that Witherspoon’s opinion is false or FABRICATED (ha ha)
You have failed to show that what Witherspoon said is false.
Poor X>
You’re just expressing your own opinion
X wrote, “Steve Witherspoon, Justice Jackson is a lot smarter than you.”
That’s pure ad hominem trolling. The fact is that you have absolutely zero evidence to support your “smarter” claim. In fact X (is “X” how you sign your name), I’d be willing to put up my old Stanford–Binet and/or ASVAB scores up against any taken by Justice Jackson prior to her turning thirty.
X wrote, “Your emotional outbursts and irrational claims are baseless.”
You making up false smears, like those, tells me that you have no intelligent arguments that you can support.
X also wrote, “Justice Jackson has effectively used her colleagues philosophies, Originalism and Textualism to point out their hypocrisy.”
Hogwash!
Only a moronic partisan hack would parrot such utter nonsense. Your sentence tells me that you really are a moron parroting the nonsense narratives fed to you by your hive mind progressive shepherds. There is more to life than being an ignorant sheeple. Grow up and start thinking for yourself and please start using some actual critical thinking.
She couldn’t point out a red dot on a white sheet of paper.
KBJ is an irrational idiot and that’s how the dems like her. Controllable.
Line up Turley’s numbers and something jumps out.
The most popular branch is the Supreme Court. The least popular is Congress. Only 10 percent view it favorably.
And the House is the part of Congress built to look most like the rest of us. Two-year terms. Small districts. Elected directly from the start.
So the branch furthest from the people is the one people trust most. The branch closest to the people is the one people can’t stand.
Congress is a mirror. And we don’t like what we see.
SCOTUS is not in the political popularity contest. They don’t answer to the American people, they answer to the Constitution so they can do what needs to be done to keep that Constitution working for the people. They maintain the status quo of our rights, The other two branches are the ones usually attacking those rights. SCOTUS is not there to give the people what they want, they are there to give people the freedom to get what they want.
Agreed. The Court answers to the Constitution, not the polls. The popularity numbers are Turley’s, not mine.
But that’s my point. The Court was built to be insulated from us. The House was built to be us. And the one built to be us is the one we can’t stand.
The Court protects our freedom to get what we want. Congress is what we did with it.
The statistics certainly point to a unity that the left is leaving out of the conversation. That’s because they simply want judicial outcomes obedient to political preferences. I submit that the idea in the numbers should be diffused well beyond Res Ipsa to all of us as voters. With the understanding that its message may not be as clear to voters focused on dinner table issues. There is an example of a judiciary gone off the rails by political design. That’s the food fight at the Supreme Court in Brasilia, Brazil. From Elon Musk to Jair Bolsonaro to attacks by the Justices on each other. In Brazil this is a dinner table issue. Be careful what you wish for.
Appreciate professor Turley’s article which gives a good perspective. We only hear divisive cases as it makes the news and we feed off of this stuff in our society. Ash
First, we must come to a consensus as to what a consensus is.
“Origin: The word comes from the Latin consentīre, which literally means “to feel together” or “to be in agreement”.”
And then there is the progressive left’s definition which is: everyone has to agree with us or they should be marched to a death camp.
Of course there will never be a true consensus as long as the progressive ideology is given on inch of legitimacy (and let us group into this team of obfuscators the DSA, communists in general and, of course islamists)
The cry for consensus by the left would be laughable if it weren’t a tragically impending future.
I do not like consensus or popular decisions imposed upon people. Consensus is a mixture of all the smart and dumb. I want just the smart and that’s why we elect politicians, to do the smart thing, not the ‘popular’ thing because popular, while it includes the ‘wisdom of the masses’, it also includes the dopiest things imaginable. Consensus would be akin to a tyranny of the masses, they very thing our Constitution defends individuals against. It is now popular for like-minded people to group together and form a consensus on your rights and impose them politically. That is not individual freedom.
How ironic… the most disliked and dysfunctional branch of our government, the Congress, wants to re-brand the most liked and most functional, the SCOTUS, to be more like themselves. you can’t make this S+it up.
I’m sorry to say this, but this article by Professor Turley is a significant disappointment. As the saying goes, figures never lie but liars always figure. I certainly to not think that Professor Turley is a liar. However, in this article, his figures don’t reveal any truth. If almost half of the Rulings were unanimous, so what? Maybe all of those Rulings had nothing to do with ideological issues. Without analyzing the ideological nature of the issues behind those Rulings, analyzing them only with statistics is a farce.
Who’s saying rulings weren’t on ideological issues?
If they weren’t ideological, what best describes them?
ideological is a wiggly word.
I agree and was disappointed as well. I am not sure, but maybe the 9-0 decisions were on things like statutory law. As an attorney, you would know better than I.
Wish I was younger so that I could witness the Libs getting exactly what they want and then having to live with the consequences. Better than any reality TV show.
@Billy
Funny. But I am young enough to not want to have to go through that. Difficult for some to recall in their personal milieus, and no media really helps, but, no offense intended, the world is not cleanly divided between snot nosed idiots and the sagacious and well seasoned. 😉
“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” — H.L. Mencken
You just gave me a great idea! I hope some big TV types are reading this. How about a reality show where a bunch of commies start a real commune? Similar to ‘Survivor’ I guess, I don’t watch reality shows. Let’s see if they get their utopia.
A nice column. Back in the 1930’s when there was a little more radicalism in the land and the economic picture was horrendous, it was the consensus of the Democratic House and Senate to not pack or eliminate the SCOTUS.And they lived in a dangerous world that was literally falling apart during the Great Depression and prior to World War 11 and the world knew another World War was likely just around the corner. They made the decision to stay the course. One has to wonder how much the present radicalism in the US is home grown and how much is imported and or lobbed into our country by adversaries.
Of anything the world in Europe is far more tumultuous as the stupidity of the EU and the left of center governments have proved to be erratic and unable to make decisions that their citizens desire. The Autocracy “light” that we have seen in Europe is failing and toppling.
I don’t have to agree with the Supreme Court all the time for it to be legitimate as long as it remains reasoned and primarily center right and center left.
I do not want a SCOTUS to primarily center right and center left. I want it reasoned and centered on the Constitution. The Constitution transcends left or right by defending individual rights and the sovereign roles and balance in purposely divided government branches. A perfectly Constitutional government would show no favor to any political interests, only to the rights and interests of it’s citizens in toto.
Come On Man – the Lefties are gonna ride that ‘Pack the Court’ Show Pony all the way to the grave because they want change on their schedule and you get that by burning down the system NOW!!! And now that they have started the Communist dialogue (oops, I mean Socialist dialogue because they are sooooo different, right?) on how they will free the oppressed little person if you just give them a chance and a match we are off to the races on the Show Pony!!! Idiot low IQ voters finally taking it to the next level.
No one on the left complained when the Warren Court basically rewrote the Constitution (gotta love the penumbra), while the big move on the right (other than the usual suspects calling to impeach Warren) were calls to impeach Bill Douglas (Thanks Jerry Ford). I was young at the time, but I can’t recall any moves on the right to pack the Court (which would have been futile)
This is a much better take than Turley’s:
https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/06/the-two-roberts-courts/
The SCOTUS Blog article is actually much worse because it tries to FORCE an ideological thesis onto the court and then craft some made up thesis to explain why so many decisions do not fit that original thesis.
While I think SCOTUS is still getting a number of issues wrong.
What is actually true is that when Justices follow the constitution not ideology they agree nearly all the time.
And the overwhelming majority of the time the justices- even jackson kagan and sotomayor follow the constitution not ideology
So long as the justices follow the constitution the people can if they wish correct unpopular decisions by changing the law or amending the constitution
Contra the left that is exactly how the courts MUST work otherwise we have the rule of man not law and we have judicial anarchy.
We have seen exactly that in the left lawfare against Trump particularly on the immigration issue.
Trump’s birth right citizenship EO exceeded his powers as president.
The court unfortunately addressed issues not properly before them resulting in a muddled decision
But they did reject Trump’s claim that this was within the power of the president.
Conversely on every other immigration issue Trump was acting within the powers given the president by the constitution and federal law. Despite lawless and unconstitutional behavior by lower courts
If you do not like the enforcement of US immigration law
All you need do is change the law. Not the courts.
That is how the rule of law works
Can’t can’t agree, Professor. It’s the same logic that came up with the “mostly peaceful protests” observations in 2020.
No one cares about the consensual or near consensual cases other than the litigants and a small set of people.We care about the cases that will deeply affect our country. And on those, which are not rare, the court is very divided.
The only thing SCOTUS has the authority to care about is: 1) Constitutional; 2) settling conflicts of opinions between circuit courts; and 3) statutory interpretation.
How a case affects the “country” – or individuals – is what Congress is supposed to concern itself with.
SCOTUS should only care about Constitutionality; circuit conflicts; and statutory interpretation.
@Anonymous
Great point. Funny how that seems to happen every time (replete with propagandized brownshirt shrieking, or worse) it concerns matters of real import, huh?
All too predictable, not in the same universe as organic or ethical. We can at least safely follow the shrieking directly back to its sources these days much of the time.
If Democrats pack the Supreme Court, their credibility may fall even further. Why would they need to, when they already have a myriad of activist judges across the country inventing new laws in their favor from the bench every day? It has even reached the point of judges helping criminals evade federal marshals.
Let’s invent a new term: combining agentic intelligence with activist judge, we have AJ, or agentic judge.
Ano
You do realize that Trump goes out of his way to denigrate SCOTUS.
___________________________
Short memory?
What lib Senator threatened the Supreme court. Then a wacko left-wing nut tried to harm them.
Right Chuck. S
Dustoff, try and make sense. Seriously.
Hate the truth loser. The dem party went after the Supreme court,
DustOff,
If it was not for the would be assassin’s sister, talking the guy down, things could of gone very differently, very badly.
‘The unpopularity of Congress hit a whopping 86% this year.’
What happens to *all* of the percentages when we remove the radicalized/sleepy/TDS addled contingent that wants to dismantle the entire system altogether? At a time like this, that would be an even more honest and important metric. I don’t think anyone sane or non-privileged espouses those views or holds those puerile opinions. A sane and adult person can be dissatisfied with outcomes and still not want to burn the house down.
“The [Supreme Court] is standing in the way” of the Left’s/DSA’s desire for a government with unlimited power.
The Founders created a brilliant system to ensure a *limited* government — three separate but co-equal branches, each a check on the others’ powers. The Left/DSA wants *total* power over the economy and over the individual’s life. To achieve that tyrannical dream, they seek to eliminate two of those branches — the Executive and an independent judiciary (especially the Supreme Court). Denigrating the Court, by any means necessary, making it appear to be “illegitimate,” is a pretext to eliminating it.
Once the two checks on government power are eliminated, what remains? A single legislative body (a politburo) that the Left/DSA controls — a body controls the totality of your life.
Like sophisticated con artists, the Left/DSA are evil and destructive. But they know exactly what they want, and have a twisted plan to achieve it.
The Left/DSA wants *total* power over the economy and over the individual’s life. Really, got facts? And MAGA is what exactly? Where do you come up with such childish nonsense?
And this one: Denigrating the Court, by any means necessary, making it appear to be “illegitimate,” is a pretext to eliminating it. Again, you got facts, where has that so-called strategy ever taken place… what countries? Proof?
You do realize that Trump goes out of his way to denigrate SCOTUS. Then that must mean he wants to destroy it? So then Trump is a DSA plant right?
“The Left/DSA wants *total* power over the economy and over the individual’s life. Really, got facts? ”
I would direct you to the DSA’s own website where they listed the radical changes they would make but they decided they were to radical and took the list down. I kid you not. They must have had someone go through it and make it more ‘appealing’.
Just to answer your probably insincere question:
Replacing the president and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress.
Abolishing the Senate, expanding the House of Representatives, implementing proportional representation and ranked-choice voting, and moving to a multi-party system.
Establishing public ownership of the largest corporations and essential industries, along with aggressive wealth taxes on the richest individuals and corporations.
Sam,
Well said.
We know it by their words and actions as the good professor has pointed out time and time again and again.
The Constitution? The DSA hates this one trick.
They know Americans are willing to die just to defend it.
Crushing communism worldwide since 1776.
The DSA are mustache-twirling cartoon villians who think they can vote away a co-equal branches of government and ignore or replace the Constitution. Legislators may make laws, but not Supreme laws, that’s in the hands of the people.
Ironic, The Constitution was literally created to handle such tyranny and can do so with ease.