More from our inbox:Suspend Sanctions on SyriaLeaning Into Religion as a DemocratPsychedelics: Medical Uses Should Come FirstImageMany polls have found steep drops in public approval of the Supreme Court after its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which eliminated the constitutional right to abortion.Credit...Eric Lee/The New York Times

To the Editor:

Re “Confidence in U.S. Justice System Plummets” (news article, Dec. 18):

As a member of the Supreme Court Bar and state, district and appellate court bars, I share my fellow citizens’ lack of confidence in the judiciary.

An important contributor is the media’s common practice in federal cases of identifying the judge by which president appointed him or her. This undermines faith in the legal reasoning for whatever opinion is being discussed, and undermines confidence in the judiciary itself.

Chief Justice John Roberts, in response to a comment by then President Donald Trump denouncing an “Obama judge,” memorably said, “We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges.” He then went on to praise the exceptional and apolitical federal judiciary doing its level best to be fair in all cases. This statement was widely mocked, and deservedly so, for being tone deaf and factually wrong.

The identification in the press of Trump judges and Obama judges may be warranted, as judges issue decisions overwhelmingly in line with the perceived desires of the political party of the president who appointed them. In many cases it is relatively easy to predict the outcome without knowing anything of the facts or the law of the case, only the political party of the president who appointed the judge.

The lack of confidence in the courts reflects the reality that the courts are political, plain and simple. American courts have earned this opprobrium, from the family court judge who decides if Joe Sixpack can see his kids to the hallowed halls of the Supreme Court, where decisions often affect the rights of all Americans.

“What he said or didn’t say is between him and the people of North Carolina,” said Mr. Vance, former President Donald J. Trump’s running mate. He added: “I’ve seen some of the statements. I haven’t seen them all. Some of them are pretty gross, to put it mildly. Mark Robinson says that those statements are false, that he didn’t actually speak them. So I think it’s up to Mark Robinson to make his case to the people of North Carolina that those weren’t his statements.”

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Disciplinary proceedings against Dr. Wax tested the tenure protections of professors and whether such protections allow them to voice opinions that many might find inappropriate or downright insulting. Many students said that they could not trust Dr. Wax to grade students without bias. But many professors — even those who found her comments profoundly racist — objected to disciplining her on the grounds of academic freedom.

Michael G. BrautigamTallinn, Estonia

To the Editor:

No one, except perhaps the reactionary majority of the Supreme Court, should be surprised that the public’s faith in the courts and the law is at an all-time low. In the past 10 years, the high court has:

1. Decreed that women are second-class citizens unable to control their own bodies.

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