"Just 44 percent of Americans approve of the job the Supreme Court is doing." (Image by Stephen Masker.)

When I was a kid, the Supreme Court was held up to children as an example of high-mindedness at its best. I put up a post recently about the extreme drift we’ve seen in the way the country perceives the Court. And while the diminished view didn’t begin with the Roberts Court, the current iteration has experienced a dramatic cratering in standing. From the New York Times:

“Just 44 percent of Americans approve of the job the Supreme Court is doing and three-quarters say the justices’ decisions are sometimes influenced by their personal or political views, according to a poll conducted by The New York Times and CBS News.

Those findings are a fresh indication that the court’s standing with the public has slipped significantly in the past quarter-century, according to surveys conducted by several polling organizations. Approval was as high as 66 percent in the late 1980s, and by 2000 approached 50 percent.”