An overwhelming majority of Americans think Supreme Court justices should serve for a limited period, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll published Wednesday.
The pollsters found that 69% of U.S. adults support limiting the number of years for justices to serve on the nation’s highest court, while 27% opposed it.
The justices currently get a lifetime appointment to the high court.
The poll also found most Americans, 63%, believe the Supreme Court is motivated by politics. Just 32% of the Americans said the justices were motivated by the law.
“Membership in the highest court in the land should not be a lifetime position say Americans, who view SCOTUS as driven by political agendas,” said Tim Malloy, a polling analyst at Quinnipiac University.
The survey also found that 65% of Americans support the 1973 Roe v Wade decision, which the court is considering overturning. Twenty-nine percent of those questioned do not agree with the Roe ruling, which gave women a national right to an abortion up until viability.
All eyes have been on the high court after a draft opinion revealed that the justices were poised to overturn the precedent.
In the draft opinion, first obtained by Politico, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said abortion should return to the state legislatures.
“The Constitution makes no reference to abortion,” he wrote. “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start.”
“It’s time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives,” reads the opinion, which was dated in February.
An official ruling in the case is expected by the end of June.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts said the draft opinion was authentic but noted it did not represent a final ruling. He has called for an investigation to uncover who leaked the document to the press.
The legal dispute at issue weighs a Mississippi ban on abortion at 15 weeks in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
Mississippi officials argue that Roe should be overturned because it’s outdated.
The legal battle was brought by Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the state’s only abortion clinic, and a doctor who provides abortions. According to court papers, the clinic provides abortions up to 16 weeks of gestation.
They challenged the state’s Gestational Age Act, enacted in 2018. The law bans abortions after 15 weeks unless there is a medical emergency or severe abnormality within the fetus.
Quinnipiac polled 1,586 adults across the country from May 12 to May 16, with a margin of error of 2.5%.
• Alex Swoyer can be reached at aswoyer@washingtontimes.com.
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