Bench divided and partisan by Sabine Fischer

By all appearances, the Supreme Court of the United States is meant to be a sacred institution, aloof from the daily political brawls, insulated from partisanship, and driven by law rather than ideology. Yet today, its black robes are stained by the red and blue of political warfare. The Court’s increasingly divided decisions, especially on high-stakes social and political issues are not merely legal disagreements. They are symptoms of a judicial system fractured by a deeper infection: the legacy of Donald Trump.

Whether one loathes or lauds him, Donald Trump’s impact on the judiciary is indisputable. In just four years—and with the help of a Republican-controlled Senate, Trump appointed three Supreme Court justices, tilting the balance of the Court to a 6-3 conservative majority. He reshaped more than 200 federal benches with lifetime appointees, most selected not for their moderation, but for their ideological purity. The result? A court system that no longer commands the quiet confidence of the public but is increasingly viewed through the same tribal lens as Congress.

This is not just a matter of who sits on the bench. It’s about how the bench behaves.

Take recent rulings on abortion, presidential immunity, environmental regulation, voting rights, and the role of religion in public life. Each decision seems to draw sharp ideological lines, with justices retreating into camps as predictably as party-line senators. The language of dissent is growing angrier. Trust in the Court is plunging. Public confidence, once the linchpin of judicial legitimacy, is eroding rapidly.

And why wouldn’t it? When the Court’s rulings consistently align with the interests of one political ideology, it ceases to appear impartial. It begins to resemble something closer to a robed legislature, one where judges are no longer neutral arbiters but partisan warriors cloaked in constitutional rhetoric.

Donald Trump didn’t create this dynamic, but he deepened and legitimized it in ways that may take decades to unravel. He openly treated the judiciary as a political weapon. He celebrated judges who ruled in his favor and attacked those who didn’t. His rhetoric emboldened the idea that loyalty to political ideals mattered more than fidelity to legal reasoning. When he promised judges who would “overturn Roe v. Wade,” he wasn’t hiding his intentions. He was advertising them.

Let’s not forget: this was the same president who mused about “my judges,” as if the judiciary were a personal extension of his will rather than an independent branch of government. That kind of language isn’t just inappropriate, it’s corrosive. It delegitimizes the Court in the eyes of millions who come to see it not as a refuge from politics, but as its brutal extension.

And yet, Trump’s influence went further than appointments. His chaotic presidency, rife with legal challenges, investigations, and unprecedented constitutional questions, dragged the Court into the political spotlight again and again. Whether deciding on matters related to January 6th, executive overreach, or the boundaries of presidential immunity, the justices were forced into the cultural theater Trump built.

In doing so, the Court has often looked less like a compass and more like a weather vane, twisting in response to public pressure, political maneuvering, and cultural tides. Even Chief Justice John Roberts, who once championed institutional integrity, has been unable to mask the fractures within.

So what happens now? We are living through the aftermath of a judiciary transformed, less trusted, more combative, and deeply entangled in partisan disputes. We now debate the decisions of the Court not only for their merit but for the motives we assume lie beneath. Did the majority rule based on legal principle? Or did they vote based on ideology? Increasingly, the answer seems foregone, and that perception alone is enough to damage the fabric of American democracy.