- As an American, I want to have a good faith belief in the Justice's approach to these cases.

After a certain number of cases come out particular ways you start to feel like cynicism is realism about the court.

[suspenseful music] - Hello and welcome to GZERO World.

I'm Ian Bremmer, and today, I am taking you to court, the Supreme Court.

In a matter of weeks, the highest court in the land will issue decisions on cases that will impact everything from gun ownership to reproductive rights to the power of government agencies.

And it comes at a time when approval for that court is at an all time low.

Emily Bazelon will be here to preview some of the most important rulings to come.

She teaches at Yale Law School, co-hosts the popular Slate Political Gabfest podcast, is a staff writer at New York Times Magazine.

Don't worry, I've also got your puppet regime.

- We go now to the courtroom where Trump is seeking clarification on what he is and is not allowed to say.

- But first, a word from the folks who help us keep the lights on.

- [Speaker 4] Funding for GZERO World is provided by our lead sponsor, Prologis.

- [Speaker 5] Every day all over the world, Prologis helps businesses of all sizes lower their carbon footprint and scale their supply chains with a portfolio of logistics and real estate and an end-to-end solutions platform addressing the critical initiatives of global logistics today.

Learn more at prologis.com.

- [Speaker 6] And by Cox Enterprises is proud to support GZERO.

We're working to improve lives in the areas of communications, automotive, clean tech, sustainable agriculture, and more.

Learn more at cox.career/news.

- [Speaker 4] Additional funding provided by Jerre and Mary Joy Stead, Carnegie Corporation of New York, and.

[upbeat music] [suspenseful music] [gavel thudding] - If it pleases the court, I hereby present a statement and a question.

Statement: The Supreme Court is less popular than ever.

Question: Does it matter?

Exhibit A: According to Gallup Polling, the court has enjoyed a strong net approval rating for most of the past quarter century, punctuated by the occasional peaks and valleys.

In fact, its highest approval rating 62% came in June of 2001, months after the Supreme Court, or SCOTUS for short, essentially handed George W. Bush the presidential election.

Viewed another way, only 25% of Americans disapproved of the court at that time, a record low.

But that was then, and this is now.

As of September 2023, only 41% of Americans approved of the Supreme Court, and a record high, 58% disapproved.

Objection.

A 41% approval rating is a number that Congress and the President would die for.

Sustained.

It's true.

In the same 24-year period, Congress's approval rating has plummeted from a post 9/11 84% high to a microscopic 15% in March of 2024.

POTUS numbers not quite as dire, same basic idea, approval fell from 90% in 2001, see freedom fries, to 38% for Joe Biden today, see inflation and Gaza.

Exhibit B, SCOTUS rightward tilt thanks to a six to three conservative majority, is largely responsible for its low approval numbers.

A restrictive Texas abortion ruling in September of 2021 caused a sharp drop and was the precursor to that June, 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision that overturned Roe v. Wade.

The court's credibility has also been under fire in recent years with ethical questions surrounding trips and other gifts that Justice Clarence Thomas received from a wealthy conservative businessman, not to mention his wife's political activism.

But does it matter?

In one sense, not really.

Our founding fathers created three equal but independent branches of government.

The Supreme Court was designed to rise above the political winds of any given moment.

Don't like the Dobbs ruling?

Then why don't you elect the president who will appoint more liberal justices?

On the other hand, a Supreme Court that's out of step with the American public is a less credible institution, at least with the American citizens.

Public faith in the court is really the only thing standing between a controversial ruling and a constitutional crisis.

Remember, SCOTUS like the Pope, has no army.

The only reason its decisions matter is because we follow them.

At this juncture, I request permission to call my first witness.

Emily Bazelon joins me now to break down some of the biggest decisions expected from the court this summer.

Emily Bazelon, welcome back to GZERO.

- Thanks so much for having me.

- So much to talk about as always with the Supreme Court and the major cases now that everyone paying attention to, it's impact on this election, specifically right now with rulings coming on immunity.

What are you surprised about in the way this has gone so far?

- Well, I was surprised by the argument before the Supreme Court in April, because it seemed going in that this was a pretty clear case, that Trump's claim that he has absolute immunity for acts he committed in office is just too broad, that this is this idea that the president is not bound by the rule of law.

The lower courts had rejected it.

It seemed kind of obvious.

And then it did not seem obvious at all while the justices were talking about it.

They didn't seem really interested in focusing on this set of criminal claims against former President Trump.

They were talking about a ruling for the ages, as Justice Gorsuch put it, raising all kinds of hypotheticals that are not, in this case, about the scope of immunity and how a ruling that didn't allow for some immunity could go too far in limiting the president's powers.

And so it was a kind of upside down moment, I think for a lot of people watching, where we thought going in, the problem was Trump claiming that he wasn't bound by law, and the conservative justices seemed to be worried about what would happen to future presidents if they made it clear that the criminal law did apply.

- Because some of the things we've heard from the Trump attorneys seem, on their face, ludicrous.

Now, I'm not an expert on jurisprudence, but the notion that you could order the assassination of your political adversary might actually have immunity seems like the kind of thing that would apply to, say Vladimir Putin.

And not to, say Joe Biden, because let's face it, this election could be over quickly if that were the case.

- Right.

So it would've seemed, going in, that you can't order such an assassination or order a military coup without facing future criminal prosecution.

And remember, we're only talking about former presidents.

We're not even talking about prosecuting someone who's still holding office.

And yet, suddenly those questions were not driving the argument.

Instead, we were talking about things like, well, this was Justice Alito.

I think the most extreme point was the idea, well, if presidents did fear criminal prosecution in the future, then they would pardon themselves.

They might do all kinds of corrupt things to avoid being held accountable.

And so that's what I mean by kind of through the looking glass upside down world.

And there were certainly liberal justices, Ketanji Brown-Jackson, for example, saying, "Wait.

Wait a second.

What are you talking about?"

But it wasn't clear whether they had a majority.

- Well, they don't have a majority.

let's put it that way.

But it is a question to me of whether the intention here is to make a ruling that stands up legally or to kick the can to ensure that the Supreme Court doesn't have to deal with this issue during an election cycle.

How much of this is about timing?

- A lot seemed to be about timing.

I think, well, they're already dealing with it during the election cycle, but I think it seemed almost impossible that Trump would face trial for these federal charges about trying to subvert the election in 2020.

Almost impossible to imagine he would face trial before November '24.

So, that almost was not even on the table anymore.

And then you have this question, okay, well, if the justices are looking ahead, where are there five votes?

Could there be five votes for a ruling that still allows for a prosecution based on all the things Trump did as a candidate, not as president?

This kind of question of official acts versus unofficial acts.

His lawyer actually conceded that a lot of the things in the indictment are private acts not necessary to holding office.

And so you could imagine a trial after the election, after a whole other process, and the district court to kind of sort through which charges are which.

That could still happen.

- So let's now talk just about the role of the Supreme Court, generally speaking, in this election.

Are there areas where you feel like the Supreme Court is losing their sense of independence, their legitimacy?

Are they stepping into political territory that with the balance of powers between the courts, the legislative, and the executive branches, that historically they've not?

What is setting precedent right now?

- When you compare this moment to Bush versus Gore, you see something pretty different unfolding.

So in Bush versus Gore, a conservative-led majority kind of rushes in to stop a recount in Florida that could have favored Al Gore, and says, "No, no, no, we're just going to issue a limited ruling to prevent this from happening."

And oh, by the way, it happens to help determine the election for George W. Bush.

He takes office and there's a kind of taint on the Supreme Court for that.

It is seen as partisan.

Now, you also have low public approval ratings for the Supreme Court, I think, again, because it is seen as partisan.

It has this even stronger conservative majority of justices all appointed by Republican presidents.

And it's talking about issuing a very broad ruling after really, really taking its time in this Trump case, and that seems at odds with the kind of push forward quickly for Bush versus Gore and the breadth of the ruling.

And the common factor is that both of these decisions appear to favor Republican candidates for president.

That's not going to help the court's reputation.

- How likely do you think that's coincidence?

- These are the questions that sort of...

They've gotten harder to answer, because as an American, I want to have a good faith belief in the justice approach to these cases.

After a certain number of cases come out particular ways, you start to feel like cynicism is realism about the court, and some of its reasoning in other cases have also given me a lot of doubt about whether there is a real kind of sense of fair mindedness and rule of law set of principles that are binding some of the conservative justices.

- I want to move to the second big area of cases in front of the court, reproductive health, right to an abortion, right to drugs that can facilitate an abortion.

Big case in front of the court right now involving the FDA.

Explain that to the viewers.

- Yeah, so this is a case about the FDA's authority to regulate drugs broadly, and in particular, to decide that it's safe to reduce restrictions on abortion pills.

The most important part of what the FDA did was to say that doctors could prescribe pills and those pills could be sent through the mail, that you didn't have to go have an in-person visit with an abortion prior to get the pills.

The challenge is brought by some doctors who are anti-abortion and who say that because of the FDA's decision, the number of complications from abortions has risen and they might have to treat such a complication in the hospital.

It's a very hypothetical claim, not the kind of claim that you usually get into court for successfully.

Usually, you have to show I actually experienced a harm.

- A harm directly.

- Yes, and it's really hard to see that here.

So during the argument before the Supreme Court, it seemed entirely likely that there would be a strong majority of justices, maybe even seven justices who would say, "You know what?

This is not the right case.

These plaintiffs didn't really experience harm, and we're not going to decide these issues about the FDA's authority, whether the FDA did it right in loosening these restrictions because we don't have the right people standing here in court."

And that would kick this can down the road, which will be very important because this is the case that affects women across the country.

- [Ian Bremmer] Right.

- It's not state by state.

It's not Idaho's abortion ban.

It's the FDA's authority to allow pills to be shipped everywhere and other rules that have made abortion pills more accessible for women in blue as well as red states.

- Four women on the Supreme Court right now, historic high water mark.

How has that played out in the arguments in the discussion on the court, on issues that are setting back, let's be clear, women's rights for decades in the United States?

- So in Dobbs, which overturned Roe Justice Barrett voted with the men on the court to overturn Roe versus Wade.

She has not taken any kind of vote yet in an abortion case that softens that result.

It will be interesting to see if that continues this term in the FDA case we were talking about.

There's also a case out of Idaho that is about whether Idaho can have an exception to its abortion ban that only applies when someone is at risk of death, a very, very strict limit, right?

Doctors have to say, "This person is going to die," before they can do an abortion.

And the federal government, the Biden administration is challenging that law under what's called EMTALA, which is the federal law that says that emergency room docs have to provide necessary stabilizing treatment for people.

So the idea is you shouldn't have to wait till a woman is at the brink of death to do an abortion if that's the procedure that is necessary to spare her from losing an organ or going into a coma.

And in the context of that case, Justice Barrett asked a lot of sharp questions that were really about women's experience of labor and delivery that seemed like she was taking this very seriously.

Now, we'll have to see how she votes to know whether that really makes a difference, but there was a level of candor about women's health and experience of pregnancy and labor that was unusual at the court.

- I'm asking this in part because, let's face it, it does seem when you're trying to understand the Supreme Court that there's a certain amount of Kremlinology, just having to read the tea leaves and understanding what these Supreme Court justices actually mean when they're making these decisions and trying to get inside their heads.

- It's true.

It's true.

I think that we do have them playing with ideas at argument, and we get to read what they've written.

And sometimes, you could just get a sense of the dynamics based on how they're responding to each other in writing.

They're on a kind of publicity tour right now, some of them to reassure everyone about how well they get along with each other individually.

I'm personally mystified why they think we should care about that.

I don't care whether they can be nice to each other when they're having lunch, whether they're collegial.

I care about whether American law is going in a direction that makes sense to most Americans, right?

I care about the principles at stake and how much they're agreeing or disagreeing about these fundamental precepts of our legal system.

- I would argue you're an unusual demographic in terms of your engagement with the Supreme Court in the United States.

- But why does it matter how well they get along with each other?

- For the average American?

- Yeah, like that they're modeling collegiality.

Who cares about that?

- Well, in a country where the one thing that Democrats and Republicans agree on is that the other side is trying to destroy democracy, it is interesting and unusual to see a group of conservatives and liberals that actually talk to each other and seem to have respect for each other's people.

- I guess I would just say that they all have an incentive to protect the institution, right?

The liberals, as well as the conservatives, they don't want to see Americans lose total faith in the court.

That's not good for them and their job security and their collective legacy, and so it just seems self-interested to me to be going on about like how chatty they are with each other.

- So beyond the degree to which these Supreme Court justices get along with each other, how much does it matter, in your view, if the Supreme Court is or is not in step with the views of the American public?

- Yeah, so this is a classic question about our separation of powers.

The justices are not elected.

They're not supposed to be simply responding to popular will, like a weathervane.

On the other hand, if they lose sight of the American public entirely, if they're not paying attention to the climate as opposed to like whether it's raining, then they lose their legitimacy.

And then the other branches of government get restive and have done things in the past, like change how many justices there are on the court.

- Which could happen again.

- Which could happen again.

And so I also think for the health of American democracy, you want all three branches more or less thinking about how the American public is moving forward as opposed to being stuck in the past.

And when you have Supreme Court justices who were confirmed decades ago, there's no term limits, there's no regularity to how they're are placed.

You risk having them really cemented back in the past with the set of concerns and politics of when they got onto the court versus thinking ahead.

And if you think the American electorate is moving in a more liberal direction and you have this very strongly entrenched conservative majority, you kind of worry about tension there.

And the question is, how much space can there be?

- Let's move on to other cases that are interesting facing the court right now.

Homelessness is in front of the court, the idea that like you have to have a right to be able to be on the street if there's no other place for you to go.

What's at stake here?

Where do you think it's going to go?

- Yeah, so this is a case coming out of a town in Oregon called Grant's Pass that provides very little services for homeless people, and also has made it a crime to sleep outside with a blanket.

And the question is whether that violates the ban against cruel and unusual punishment in the Eighth Amendment.

The Ninth Circuit, which is the appeals court that has jurisdiction in the west of the United States, said years ago that it is, that cities can't provide very few services and also make it a crime to sleep outside.

The rest of the country doesn't live under that legal regime.

And it's easier for cities to say, "You gotta go.

You can't sleep here.

You can't put up a tent here."

And the justice had a kind of philosophical discussion about sleeping.

Is sleeping like breathing, something that a city or a state has to make room for people to be able to do?

And if they don't have it inside, then they have to do it outside.

The conservatives were skeptical about this whole idea that you would have any Eighth Amendment right to live outside.

And so it seemed like at the end of argument, that cities are going to have more leeway to make people get up and move to prevent homeless people from being on the street, in parks, et cetera.

- Last case I want to ask you about is this landmark Chevron case that involves to what extent these major US federal agencies like the EPA can make significant overarching rulings.

- Yeah, so this is a case that's really about deregulation.

We have federal agencies, they take the laws that Congress has written and they fill in all the details with regulations.

And that's how the democracy has operated really since the New Deal.

The agencies have become more powerful.

They do more.

And increasingly, corporations are more conservative.

They want less regulation.

They push back.

So one of the big legal rulings at the center of this, Chevron, says that if a law is ambiguous and the agency has a reasonable interpretation of it, courts will defer to the agency's reading of the law.

And the idea here is that agencies have hundreds of people who work there, they're the experts, judges are not, they know better.

That is now completely up for grabs.

Seems very unlikely that Chevron, as we've known it since the mid 1980s, is going to continue.

And what the conservative justices seemed eager to do in this case was make it easier for corporations to challenge regulations and to have judges that are sympathetic to that point of view overrule agencies like the EPA and the SEC and the FDAA, that kind of alphabet soup of Washington that for many decades we've relied on to make these rules.

- And so the idea of the so-called Deep State, where you have thousands and thousands of bureaucrats that are making laws for your average Americans, but there is again, a sense of delegitimization there.

It's not the Supreme Court.

It's not just your Congress.

It's also the civil servants in the United States.

We're seeing backlash against that.

- Absolutely.

And one way to think about these agencies is that they keep us safe, right?

They make sure the water is clean and that the air is clean, and they tell power plants you have to limit your carbon emissions.

Another way to think about them is they're intruding on corporate profits and taking up too much power.

And either Congress should be writing very, very clear, very granular rules about what.

- They can regulate.

- Exactly.

Or the court should be saying, "We're going to figure it out ourselves, and probably in a more deregulatory environment."

- So in the grand scheme of things, it seems like a lot more at stake with Supreme Court rulings for the state of the Republic right now in this session than we would normally see.

- Yeah, this is just a huge year for the Supreme Court.

You're right.

There's a whole other set of challenges about the power of social media platforms vis-a-vis the government, states that want to tell companies like Meta and X, et cetera, that they can't remove content from their platforms that they want to remove because they think that it's misinformation or it's hate speech.

So yeah, it's just a giant year for the Supreme Court.

You're right.

- Nobody better to navigate it with us.

Emily Bazelon, thanks so much for coming back on GZERO.

- Thanks for having me.

[gentle techno music] - And now, it's time for Puppet Regime where justice is a dish best served by little felt hands with three fingers.

- The news from former President Trump's trial, Judge Mechan has held Trump in contempt, fined him, and warned him against further violations of the gag order.

We go now to the courtroom where Trump is seeking clarification on what he is and is not allowed to say.

- Okay, so what if we said, "Judge Mechan's daughter is an absolute..." No, we can't say that?

All right.

All right, maybe we won't say that.

That's all right.

Too bad, but we're not going to say it.

What if we said, "Bill Barr is a fat, stupid, lazy idiot, but not lethargic?"

We can say that?

That's great.

We're going to keep saying.

And what if we said, "Michael Cohen is an absolute ra?"

- [Speaker 8] Can't say that.

- Not, we can't say that?

That's very unfair.

Very unfair.

And one last question.

What if I said something about a little country I like to call Israel?

Oh yeah?

And what if I said it like on a college campus?

- [Speaker 9] Puppet Regime!

- That's our show this week.

Come back next week.

And if you like what you've seen, or even if you don't, but you want a new Supreme Court, we can help you with that.

Why don't you check us out at gzeromedia.com?

[upbeat music] [upbeat music continues] [upbeat music continues] [bright music] - [Speaker 4] Funding for GZERO World is provided by our lead sponsor, Prologis.

- [Speaker 5] Every day all over the world, Prologis helps businesses of all sizes lower their carbon footprint and scale their supply chains with a portfolio of logistics and real estate and an end-to-end solutions platform.

Addressing the critical initiatives of global logistics today.

Learn more at prologis.com.

- [Speaker 6] And by Cox Enterprises is proud to support GZERO.

We're working to improve lives in the areas of communications, automotive, clean tech, sustainable agriculture, and more.

Learn more at cox.careers/news.

- [Speaker 4] Additional funding provided by Jerre and Mary Joy Stead, Carnegie Corporation of New York, and... [upbeat music] [upbeat music] [no audio] [no audio] [no audio] [no audio] [no audio] [no audio] [no audio] [no audio] [no audio]