For more than a decade, decisions handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court were largely in step with American public opinion on major policy issues, even as the Court’s makeup grew more conservative. Abruptly, that is no longer the case.
The Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson has garnered all the recent attention by reversing a 50-year precedent and eliminating the constitutional right to an abortion — despite the fact that a majority of Americans support abortion rights. But in fact, it is part of a larger, measurable shift in the past two years, in which the Court has consistently taken positions on major issues that are more conservative than the views of the citizens whose interests it notionally safeguards.
This analysis is not just anecdotal. In a series of surveys we have conducted of the American public over the past several years, we show that these latest rulings put the Court squarely at odds with public opinion. CONTINUED
Stephen Jessee (U. of Texas at Austin), Neil Malhotra (Stanford) & Maya Sen (Harvard), Politico Magazine
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