Supreme Court’s approval rating highest in over a decade: Gallup

A new poll from Gallup finds that 58 percent of Americans approve of how the Supreme Court is handling its job, the highest rating in more than a decade.

The survey found that the Supreme Court is more well regarded than either President Trump or Congress. Trump’s approval rating is 41 percent, while slightly fewer than 20 percent give Congress favorable marks, according to the latest Gallup figures.

The poll of Americans’ attitudes toward the court was conducted last month, amid the end of a blockbuster term that saw the justices issue rulings which delivered wins and losses to both liberals and conservatives alike.

The final weeks of the term included a split decision over access to Trump’s tax returns and a ruling to extend federal anti-discrimination protections to LGBT people in the workplace.

The justices also voted 5-4 to strike down a Louisiana abortion restriction and block the Trump administration from ending an Obama-era deportation shield for young undocumented immigrants.

Court watchers credit the stewardship of Chief Justice John Roberts with helping to project an image of the court as a stable and cautious institution against a backdrop of hyper-partisanship.

“The rule of law remains largely intact,” attorney and legal analyst Brad Moss told The Hill. “And that is due in no small part to the institutional caution that exemplifies the Roberts court.” 

According to Gallup, the last time the Supreme Court received a similarly high rating from Americans was in 2009, the year Justice Sonia Sotomayor was confirmed and became the court’s first Hispanic justice.

Over the intervening decade, the court’s rating dipped below 50 percent for several years, though more recently it has hovered around that figure.

The most recent poll was conducted July 1-23 among 1,007 adults. The survey has a sampling margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.