Futility. Making sense of both public knowledge and opinion of the third branch of government is an exercise in futility. Either people love to hate the Supreme Court or they know nothing about it. There’s no middle ground. I wrote about Court rancor two years ago when Pew Research Center released data from a survey taken at the end of a big term. The timing of the poll, rather the release of the poll results, struck me as convenient given the rulings on same-sex marriage cases Part I, affirmative action, and voting rights had come down three months before. It seemed poised to affirm conventional wisdom that public reaction to the decisions falls in either the “Love it” or “Hate it” camp. There is seldom any middle ground to the average voting age citizen. Follow that up with “What do you think of the job the Court is doing?” and the answers are an ambiguous “Meh…” or return to “Same response. Hate it.” Continue reading →