According to a C-SPAN poll, fewer than one in five people can name Elena Kagan, the Solicitor General and Obama’s nominee for Associate Justice John Paul Stevens’ seat on the Supreme Court. Only about a third of respondents could name even one sitting member of the Court. (Given that the average citizen will live and die without ever exercising a non-trivial effect on the composition the court, this is not surprising.) Two-thirds of respondents were unable to name a case that the Supreme Court had decided.
Oddly, despite general ignorance as to who it comprises and what it does, the Court gets a pretty high approval rating relative to the other branches: A large plurality of respondents (48%) think that the judicial branch of the federal government is “doing the best job at serving the public’s interest.” That included more than half of those respondents who identified as independents.?
