The Supreme Court ruling to overturn its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision is unpopular with a majority of Americans — but did that matter?
The relationship between the public and the judiciary has been studied and debated by legal and political scholars. The short answer: it’s complicated. There’s evidence that the public has an indirect role in the judiciary, but that might be changing.
In the final opinion, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that the court “cannot allow our decisions to be affected by any extraneous influences such as concern about the public’s reaction to our work.”
