Around one in three U.S. adults think that it might be better to abolish the nation’s high court if it begins making a lot of decisions which most Americans disagree with, according to a survey from the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania.
While 11% strongly agreed, 23% somewhat agreed with this statement: “If the Supreme Court started making a lot of rulings that most Americans disagreed with, it might be better to do away with the Court altogether.”
The combined 34% who either strongly or somewhat agreed represents a notable increase from the 20% who felt that way in 2019.
Similarly, 12% in the recent survey strongly agreed, while 26% somewhat agreed with this statement: “When Congress disagrees with the Supreme Court’s decisions, Congress should pass legislation saying the Supreme Court can no longer rule on that issue or topic.”
The 38% who either strongly or somewhat agreed represents a jump from just 28% who felt that way in 2018.
“The willingness of more than 1 in 3 Americans to entertain the idea of abolishing the court or stripping jurisdiction from it is alarming,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the APPC.
Considering the fact that the high court is one of the three coequal branches of America’s federal government, this indicates that around one third of those surveyed were open to fundamentally restructuring the country’s system of governance.
“The Annenberg Civics Knowledge Survey was conducted September 7-12, 2021, among 1,008 U.S. adults. The survey was conducted for APPC by SSRS, an independent research company, and has a margin of error of ± 4.0 percentage points at the 95% confidence level,” according to the APPC.