I thought "wow, 44% that is pretty high." I would have thought the number would be in the mid thirty range at the most.

95%+ of Americans don't know what goes into a SC decision. There is a reason we have a SC and they are there for life so they won't be intimidated by the popular opinion of the day.

The terrible 5 are nothing but partisan hacks.

Very, very few SC decisions are made in a the 5-4 alliance that you suggest.

They may deviate some on non-partisan issues that are not terribly important, but the big cases seem to always be split among the same 5-4 lines.

You (and I) find partisan issues important because we are partisan. Every SC case is important to some interest. Otherwise it would never get there. The SC would not accept it if there were not important legal issues. Also it costs a fortune to get a case to the SC so it has to be important to some interest to finance it.

snip:
Koch Brothers Get Their Buddies On The Supreme Court In Trouble
It turns out that past guests at these Koch-sponsored events include Supreme Court justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

It’s a good thing for Scalia and Thomas that in the letter of invitation Charles Koch sent out for their event in Palm Springs next January, he explicitly asked all invitees to keep the meeting a secret from the media. Otherwise the general public would find out that Supreme Court justices secretly meet with Republican politicians, and billionaire business executives to discuss how to impose more corporate-friendly policies on the American people.

http://www.alan.com/2010/10/21/koch-brothers-get-their-buddies-on-the-supreme-court-in-trouble/

by their Corporate Masters. We the public have a right to know about their decisions. I call it the Supreme Court of Injustice since John Robert's disastrous Citizens United ruling.

Once again the United States Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts has shown the nation it will always favor corporations over people even if it means conjuring new law out of thin air. Like Citizens United, the recent 5-4 ruling in AT&T's favor gutting the power of consumers to file class-action lawsuits against giant corporations tips the scales of justice against the people and renders the enormous power of corporations even more enormous.

http://conservativesarecommunistss.blogspot.com/2011/05/supreme-courts-conservative-gang-of.html

The same five justices who always seem to vote the same way, one of those five has not even spoken a word in years he simply sits and pretends to listen then votes in a very predictable way every time. That does not tell me that a lot of time is put into their decisions and it certainly does not tell me that these assholes deserve lifetime appointments with virtually no way to hold them accountable.

If they were easy the case would never be accepted by the SC. Not many decisions are 5-4. In the past 5 years, 5-4 split decisions average 22% of all cases. In those decisions the "five" are not always the same. The average for unanimous decisions over the last five years is 41%. Thomas does not speak in oral argument because he opposes it. He feels that no one ever changes their mind because of oral argument so why have it.

Scalia, Thomas, and Alito had appeared at secret right-wing fundraisers

A few months ago, ThinkProgress launched a series of investigations into relationship of the right flank of the Supreme Court — Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Antonin Scalia — with corporate donors and Republican operatives. In October, we revealed, through a document obtained from Koch Industries, that Scalia and Thomas had attended secret right-wing fundraisers organized by Charles Koch to coordinate political strategy. ThinkProgress has now discovered more events attended by conservative Supreme Court justices.

The Manhattan Institute, funded by major corporations like CIGNA, Koch Industries and ExxonMobil, is a conservative think tank in New York that produces right-wing policy papers as well as sponsoring speeches for judges and Republican politicians. In 2008, Justice Thomas headlined the Manhattan Institute’s Wriston Lecture; last October, Justice Alito was the headline speaker for the same event. According to the Manhattan Institute’s website, an individual must contribute between $5,000 to $25,000 to attend the Wriston Lecture. “To be invited to the Wriston Lecture,” Debbie Ezzard, a development official at the Manhattan Institute told ThinkProgress, “you have to give $5,000.”

--more--
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/01/26/140655/alito-thomas-singer/

They are right-wing politicians using the power of the Supreme Court to advance their ultra-conservative political opinions.

We could also put them there for a finite time like twenty years and they still will not be intimidated. If we had a term limit, Uncle Clarence Thomas and T. Bone Scalia would be leaving.

Ginsberg would be gone and Stevens would have left much sooner. I do agree that 20 years or so should be the limit. Many justices stay way too long and their mental capabilities are just not there. Justice William O. Douglas, a great Justice who was great for civil liberties lost it towards the end. He wrote one opinion where he said trees had the right to sue people. The other 8 justices, liberal and conservative, agreed to defer decisions where his vote would be the deciding vote.

not that it matters when taking polls about the judicial branch

Diana Ross and Mary Wilson. Can't remember the other one.

... I have a lifetime appointment. What *I* say *is* law."

Because, he does and it usually is. Elections have consequences. Failure to stand up to election fraud has consequences. Failure to block shitty appointees has consequences.

The One Percent who run this country own the right people - including Roberts, Thomas, Scalia, Alito and Kennedy - as well as those who put them there and allowed them to be put there. It's gonna take a true revolution to change that.

Given how nakedly partisan the right-wing majority is and how clear their political bias is, it should be that high. Scalia, Thomas and Alito completely ignore the law and just pick the furthest right option available to them. Scalia barely bothers pretending otherwise anymore.

might come from the obvious conflicts of interest that several of the judges engage in.
accepting huge speaking fees from groups whose cases are up for review, having one's wife work for a group under review, etc.
at least four of the SC judges ought to be impeached.

or could even name more than 1 . clarence thomas probably being the one most people know just because of late night comedy jokes.

By writing it out as "three-quarters", which of course said plainly is 75%.

So, 75% of the people surveyed said that the justices are bought by special interests. Anyone, else find that stat more telling than the relatively insignificant 44% approval rate?

I wonder if it is the same 25% that are firmly entrenched RWers, that at least claim to think that justices are not bought by corporations.

Just as long as the partisan politicking is in their favor.