Supreme Court in danger of having rulings ignored over 'legitimacy' concerns: legal expert

The seemingly endless stream of controversial rulings from the conservative majority Supreme Court — along with accusations of major ethical violations — has created a trust gap that may come back to haunt the nation's highest court.

The court is in recess until October after dropping a presidential immunity bombshell on the last day that, in effect, handed embattled Donald Trump a get-out-of-jail-free card, and that which has led to outrage among legal experts, with one legal scholar claiming the dying reputation of the court has moved on to even shakier ground.

In a report on the court by the Washington Post's Justin Juvenal, the court's most recent term was scrutinized by legal scholars and the reviews were scathing.

With Juvenal writing, "The justices issued blockbuster rulings that pushed the law sharply to the right, while outside the court some justices were buffeted by new ethics allegations that stoked questions from critics about their impartiality," Charles Geyh, an expert on judicial ethics at Indiana University sees trouble on the horizon.

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“They’ve got a potential legitimacy problem. The traditional notion that we will accept the results of the court whether we agree with it or not … is decreasingly the case," he explained before adding, "A lot of the ethics problems the court confronts fuel the perception that it is an organization more political than legal.”

Former Justice David Souter clerk, Kermit Roosevelt, who now teaches law at the University of Pennsylvania, claimed it goes even deeper.

“When we start seeing the consequences of some of these recent decisions like overruling Chevron and presidential immunity, I think its reputation will go down even further,” he told the Post.

Gabe Roth, the executive director of Fix the Court, climbed the additional scrutiny along with stronger calls for judicial ethics reform is a positive sign.

“I’ve long believed that Supreme Court justices should be treated like politicians when it comes to assessing their moral character and potential entanglements. We have moved to that place, and I think that’s positive given how powerful the justices are, " Roth asserted.

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