The Patriot Post® · Are the Left's Attacks on SCOTUS Working?

According to a recent poll conducted by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, the vast majority of Americans believe that the U.S. Supreme Court is more ideologically adherent than impartial.

That’s a bad thing. After all, the High Court’s legitimacy is tied to its perceived impartiality.

The poll found that 70% of Americans think that the decisions the Court ultimately hands down are based primarily on the justices’ own personal ideology and not the Rule of Law. Furthermore, just 40% said that they were confident in the Court’s decisions — a perception that has decreased since the Court’s landmark overturning of Roe v. Wade two years ago.

Of course, the leading reason for the belief that the Court is ruling along ideological lines has much to do with the political affiliation of those polled.

Who gets to decide whether a law is within the bounds of the Constitution? Often enough, the Supreme Court has the last word.

But here’s the rub. With the Left, primarily Democrats, pushing the legally convenient notion of the Constitution being a “living document,” the “spirit of the law” is elevated over and against the “letter of the law.” Or, to put it in judicial parlance, the long divide on the Court has been between “originalism” versus “living constitutionalism.”

According to originalism, the actual text of the Constitution provides the primary means for understanding and interpreting the law. Living constitutionalism, on the other hand, argues that as time has passed, the interpretation of the Constitution must include developments in judicial precedents and changing cultural values.

This difference is also reflected in the basic stances of the national political divide. Conservatives embrace a more originalist stance on the Constitution, whereas leftists embrace a more “progressive” view of an ever-evolving Constitution.

That the American people would view the Court as ideologically committed comes as little surprise. Indeed, a better question to ask is: When have the American people not viewed the Court as ideologically divided?

But the Supreme Court’s ideological divide has recently been treated by Democrats and their colleagues in the Leftmedia as somehow new and “dangerous.” And this is now a problem because the Court’s current makeup leans more ideologically originalist than progressive. Of course, when the Court was leaning leftward, as it had in previous years, those on the Left didn’t seem to object.

This reality exposes the actual reason Democrats and the Leftmedia have engaged in this handwringing operation against the current Court. Because the current Court does not share their radical progressive views, it has been painted as being “too politically minded.” The irony is that the exact opposite is the case.

When it comes to originalism, conservatives can point to the Constitution as the ultimate standard by which to judge the Court and its decisions. Does the decision comport with the Constitution? There is an objective standard against which to measure the justices. However, when it comes to the “living constitution” rationale, by what standard are the justices to be measured? Indeed, under this view, the justices themselves continually set and subsequently reset the standards. Objectivity is replaced with subjectivity, and assessing a justice’s performance ultimately comes down to one’s own political views and not the letter of the Constitution.

Therefore, even the reporting of the public view of the Court is itself an effort by the Leftmedia to smear a right-leaning Court as a threat to “impartiality.” In fact, the opposite would be the case. Those truly threatening the American judiciary are not conservatives. Rather, they are radical progressives whose only standard for jurisprudence is whatever advances their own political agenda.