Americans Losing Faith in Judiciary

A new Gallup survey should provide a word of warning for people who wear black robes in this country.

Faith in the judiciary has dropped to an all-time low.

According to the survey, the judiciary’s approval is now at 35%.

No Faith

Currently, the United States is well below the approval rating for OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries.

Since 2006, for the most part, the country was above the OECD line until 2021 (there were several other blips, but nothing that was sustained).

Beginning in 2021, Americans continued to lose faith in the judiciary to the point that we have gone from +1 in 2020 to -20 in 2024, with only 35% of Americans having faith in the judiciary.

This puts the United States in the company of such countries as Venezuela and Syria, to give you an idea of how dire this situation is.

This is because we seemingly have more activists on the bench than actual jurors.

I always laugh because when we talk about cases on these pages, I can usually predict with about 95% accuracy the outcome of the case based on who appointed the sitting judge.

This was also a rather rough cycle for Biden judiciary nominees, who were often embarrassed during the vetting hearings but still passed through by Democrats.

I can say without question that there are likely 20-35% of the judiciary right now who are not nearly qualified to be wearing that robe, but the Senate stopped doing its job of properly vetting candidates more than a decade ago, as partisanship on the courts became far more important.

If you need proof of that, just look at how Senate Democrats and the White House pulled support of legislation that would have added more than 50 judges to the bench over the next decade, with the first round of judges being added in 2025.

Now that Trump won the election, they want to kill the legislation, and Biden has already stated he is likely to veto it, even though the legislation originated in the Senate, which Democrats control.

When you look at all of this collectively, it is no wonder the American people no longer trust the judiciary in this country.