- The Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in a ruling gutting federal protections of abortion rights.
- But despite subsequent protests, polls suggest few Americans know who the decisive judges are.
- Clarence Thomas was the most recognized judge, but was only named by 24% of those surveyed.
On Friday, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the nearly 50-year landmark ruling protecting abortion rights across the country, sparking widespread protests as the country grapples with the ensuing ruling.
But recent polling suggests the vast majority of American voters don’t even know who these influential judges are, highlighting an apparent disconnect between the nation’s highest court and the very people affected by its rulings.
Prior to the Senate confirmation of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson earlier this year, C-SPAN and Pierrepont Consulting and Analysis surveyed more than 1,000 likely voters to gauge public interest in and awareness of the Supreme Court’s work and relevance.
While 84% of voters said Supreme Court decisions affect their daily lives, far fewer respondents were able to provide basic details about the court’s history or inner workings.
However, the poll seemed to confirm the cultural position of Roe v. Wade: It is the only landmark Supreme Court case that is well known to the public, according to the survey. When asked to name the cases decided by the court, 40% of people said Roe v. Wade. The next best-known decision, Brown v. Board of Education, was named by only 6% of those surveyed, and 46% of people could not name a single case.
Apparently, an even larger number of people were unable to name one of the nine judges who currently sit on the nation’s highest court. Forty-eight percent of people did not respond to a question about the current composition of the Supreme Court, while three percent of people openly acknowledged that they could not provide an answer.
Clarence Thomas, the longest-serving justice currently on the court, was the most recognizable face, closely followed by Chief Justice John Roberts. But even then, only 24% and 22% of those surveyed, respectively, named either of the two men.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett followed next, with 17%, 15% and 13% of respondents naming them respectively, while Stephen Breyer took 11%.
But among the remaining three judges, fewer than 1 in 10 people could name Elena Kagan, Neil Gorsuch, or Samuel Alito.
However, it was Alito on Friday who delivered the majority opinion in Roealong with his conservative colleagues, Gorsuch, Thomas, Kavanaugh and Coney Barrett.
Roberts sided with the 6-3 majority to uphold Mississippi law at the heart of the case, contradicting the standard established by Roe. But the chief justice questioned the conservative majority’s full review of Roe, opting for a more middle-of-the-road approach that would have allowed Mississippi to keep its statute, effectively weakening abortion rights without destroying them outright.
The decision returns the issue of abortion rights to the individual states, handing power over to a new subset of decisive judges: the supreme judges of each state, who, in all likelihood, are even less well known to the American public than their national counterparts.
And in November, 86 state supreme court seats will be on the ballot.
Reference-www.businessinsider.com