The Supreme Court is, and always has been, a political institution. That would be self-evident if not for the mystique that has been built up around America's most important judicial body. That aura has started to dissipate — a recent Monmouth University poll found that more than half of Americans disapproved of the court's recent performance — but it remains powerful enough that people take Chief Justice John Roberts seriously when he bemoans the supposed politicization of the Supreme Court. Before his retirement, Justice Stephen Breyer even published a book urging Americans to return the high court to its supposedly august and apolitical roots.
Now that the justices are evidently poised to overturn Roe v. Wade, those who insist (or imagine) that the Supreme Court must somehow remain above politics have become even more strident: Pro-choice advocates argue that the impending decision proves that that the high court has strayed from its constitutional mission, while the anti-abortion contingent insists that since judges are above politics their reasoning is unassailable — and the presumed leaker has immeasurably damaged the institution.
