The Supreme Court's real problem is not Trump. It is itself

THE AMERICAN president has called the justices of the Supreme Court "fools" and "lapdogs". Mr Trump's rhetoric is unprecedented. It is also a distraction. The court's crisis of legitimacy is not being manufactured by a bad-tempered president. It is the product of a structural failure that the justices themselves engineered.

The numbers tell the story. Gallup's latest poll, published at the end of the 2025-26 term, found that 33% of Americans approve of the job the Supreme Court is doing — its lowest level in 26 years. Disapproval stands at 61%. A Pew Research Centre survey from July 2026 found just 45% of Americans view the court favourably, close to the lowest point in more than three decades. Approval has fallen 20 percentage points since 2021, when it stood at 65%.

These figures are bad. But the more revealing data is who is turning away. Democrats' favourability has collapsed from 65% in 2021 to just 25% today, a direct consequence of the court's 2022 decision overturning the federal right to abortion and subsequent rulings on issues such as transgender athletes. That is predictable. The real development is on the other side: Republican approval has been falling too. Gallup recorded it at 58% in July 2026, down sharply from 79% the previous September. Marquette Law School's poll found it at 74%, down from 84% in February 2025. The partisan gap that averaged 18 points in the 2000s has widened to more than 32 points since 2010, and even the court's core constituency is restive.

Mr Trump's attacks are not the root cause. They are what happens when a president exploits a court that has already squandered its goodwill.

In February 2026, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act — the statute Mr Trump had invoked to impose his sweeping "Liberation Day" tariffs — does not authorise the president to levy tariffs. Two of the justices who joined the majority, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, were Mr Trump's own appointees. At a National Republican Congressional Committee dinner in March, Mr Trump expressed his displeasure. "Two of the people that voted for that, I appointed, and they sicken me," he said. "They're bad for our country." He also alleged the justices were part of a "vast global conspiracy", swayed by "foreign interests".

It is easy to dismiss this as a tantrum. The rhetoric is ugly. But the deeper problem is the court's response: silence. Chief Justice John Roberts warned against personal attacks on judges at a Rice University event, noting that intemperate statements "can actually be quite dangerous". That is a faint response from a court that has presided over years of ethics scandals, including Justice Clarence Thomas's receipt of undisclosed gifts and travel from billionaire donors, yet refuses to adopt a binding code of conduct. The judiciary's culture of silence, which it once treated as a shield, has become a vacuum that Mr Trump fills with venom.

To be sure, Mr Trump's attacks are not harmless. Threats against federal judges logged by the US Marshals Service rose to 564 in fiscal 2025, up from 403 three years earlier. Senior Judge Paul Friedman told an audience in Berkeley that the rhetoric had become "more partisan, more personal, more threatening, and more purposefully misleading than ever before". The administration has repeatedly defied lower-court orders — a Minnesota judge cited nearly 100 violations. These are serious threats to the rule of law.

Yet Mr Trump's behaviour is a symptom, not a disease. Presidents have always clashed with courts. Franklin Roosevelt court-packed. Richard Nixon resigned rather than hand over tapes. What distinguishes this moment is that the court's institutional buffer — the goodwill accumulated by decades of perceived neutrality — has been squandered from within. The justices' own choices have done more to erode their legitimacy than any president could.

The structural reasons are clear. Lifetime tenure, which once produced average terms of around 15 years, now yields tenures of 26 years or more. Justice Barrett, appointed at 48, could serve for three decades. That turns every vacancy into a multigenerational prize, guaranteeing that confirmation battles will grow more toxic rather than less. Since the 1960s, no justice has retired when an opposing party would appoint their successor. Strategic timing has replaced institutional continuity. The Senate's advice-and-consent process has been replaced by what scholars call "asymmetric constitutional hardball": the Republican Senate refused to consider Merrick Garland in 2016, then confirmed Ms Barrett just 45 days after Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death. No nominee since Stephen Breyer in 1994 has matched the broad bipartisan support he received.

The result is a court that looks, to an increasing share of the public, like a political body. Marquette's survey found that 58% of Americans believe justices are motivated mainly by politics, up from 52% in May. Another 54% believe the court avoids ruling against Mr Trump for fear he may refuse to obey. Among Democrats, 76% hold that view.

The court has tried to compensate for its democratic deficit by deciding more cases on the merits — striking down tariffs, limiting birthright citizenship restrictions, protecting Federal Reserve independence from politically motivated firing. The Marquette poll found that all but two of its 13 major decisions in the past year command majority public support. The tariff case drew 66%. The Federal Reserve case, 70%. But deciding the right cases does not rebuild institutional legitimacy when the process that appoints the decision-makers is perceived as thoroughly partisan. A court that rules well does not earn loyalty if the public doubts that tomorrow's court — staffed by yet more strategically timed appointments — will do the same.

The strongest argument against reform is that it exposes the court to political manipulation. Term limits, a binding ethics code, jurisdictional constraints — any of these could be wielded as weapons by whichever party holds power. That concern is real. But the alternative — a court with more power than any institution in American government, insulated by life tenure, unbound by ethics rules, and whose appointments are decided by strategic retirements and partisan hardball — is already being manipulated. It is just being manipulated by the justices themselves, through the timing of their exits, and by the donors who cultivate their loyalty.

The better answer is structural reform that reduces rather than increases the stakes of any single appointment. An 18-year term limit, with staggered appointments that guarantee one vacancy every two years, would remove the incentive for strategic retirements, ensure that every president gets an equal share of appointments, and shorten the generational footprint of any single justice. An Annenberg poll from September 2025 found that 69% of Americans support it. A mandatory ethics code, enforceable by outside investigators rather than the justices themselves, would address the scandals that have done so much damage to the court's image. Neither reform requires a constitutional amendment. Both fall within Congress's existing authority under Article III.

The trouble is politics. Republican-controlled Congress has no incentive to limit the court it helped stack. Democrats would rather pack the court than constrain it. Both approaches would make things worse. The court's legitimacy problem is not going to be solved by the party that benefits from the current arrangement.

Mr Trump's attacks will not bring the Supreme Court down. They are the fire, not the fuel. The fuel is a lifetime appointment system that has turned every vacancy into a national blood sport, a refusal to adoptbasic ethical standards, and a culture of silence that mistakes invisibility for dignity. The court's 33% approval rating is not a scandal manufactured by a vindictive president. It is the arithmetic of institutional decay. Reform is available. Whether the politicians — and the justices themselves — have the courage to enact it is the real question.