by Jeremy Leaming
Though not nearly as lame as Congress, approval ratings of the U.S. Supreme Court are waning. At least according to a new poll by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, which shows the high court’s favorability has “reached a quarter-century low.” (An April Gallup survey shows only 17 percent approve of Congress.)
The Pew survey, conducted after the Supreme Court’s high-profile consideration of the Obama administration’s landmark health care reform law, shows that 53 percent favor the high court, down from 58 percent in 2010 “and the previous low” of 57 percent in 2005 and 2007. The Pew Research Center says there “are virtually no partisan differences in views of the Supreme Court,” though noting that 56 percent of Republicans approve of the Court, while 52 percent of Democrats and independents hold a favorable view. Republicans’ favorable view of the Court dropped “steeply between 2009 and 2010, with the appointments of Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan,” while Democrats’ favorable view of the Court has declined since 2011.
The survey also continued to show a sharp divide between supporters and opponents of the Affordable Care Act.
The oral argument in the case challenging the constitutionality of the health care reform law drew widespread coverage, with several of the high court’s right-wing justices garnering criticism for their apparent lack of understanding of the how the health care insurance market works. Following last week’s oral argument in the case over Arizona’s rabid anti-immigrant law, a string of commentators also noted that Justice Antonin Scalia had a wobbly grasp of the complexity of the federal immigration law.
Pop quiz: What is the central constitutional provision at issue in the Supreme Court’s review of the Affordable Care Act? If you said the Commerce Clause, you’re one step ahead of many of the tea partiers who protested outside the Supreme Court during oral arguments.
easingly has difficulty, as The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank 
rnment can make people pay for health care through health insurance. They take issue only as to when the government can compel that purchase, arguing that no one can be forced to buy insurance before they need to pay for health care. The challengers also admit that the federal government could force everyone to pay higher taxes to cover the health care costs of those without insurance. Nor do they deny that the federal government can require doctors to provide emergency care to those without health insurance, and then to allow those doctors to pass along the costs of that care to the rest of us through higher insurance premiums and taxes – indeed, that is how our system currently operates. Finally, the challengers acknowledge that the states themselves could pass laws mandating that all their citizens purchase health insurance, as Massachusetts has done. 