EDITORIAL: Confidence in high court waning

Jan. 24—National policy is crafted by just 535 elected members of Congress and one elected president, but often is decided, ultimately, by just the nine members of the Supreme Court.

Justices are appointed for life to insulate them from political pressure. Absent such pressure, the Founders reasoned, justices would be free to act on the meaning of the Constitution and the laws alone.

But the court's authority relies primarily on public acceptance, which relies in turn on public confidence in the court's integrity.

Over the past several years, numerous surveys have shown that public confidence in the court has shrunk, driven largely by ideological warfare over appointments and resulting decisions.

One of those decisions in 2022, known as Dobbs, eliminated the constitutional right to abortion. In May, prior to the release of the Dobbs decision, someone in the court leaked a draft opinion to the news site, Politico.

The court reported on the investigation Thursday that Chief Justice John Roberts ordered into the leak. The report embarrassed the court by revealing its stunningly lax document security, but did not identify a leaker.

It reported that the court's marshal interrogated more than 70 people, but not the justices. They engaged in an "iterative process" with investigators, in which the justices often asked rather than answered questions.

Roberts, zealously guarding the court's "independence," assigned the investigation to an in-house body with no law enforcement power. It's hardly surprising that the investigators deferred to the investigated.

Independence and a lack of accountability are not synonyms. The court has accelerated its declining rate of public confidence.