Keywords
rhetoric, judicial legitimacy, Pro Se litigation, confidence, judicial decisions
Abstract
In recent months, headline after headline has decried twin threats to the federal judiciary: declining public trust in the courts and escalating threats to judges’ personal safety. The public’s opinion of the Supreme Court reached “close to a three decade low” in 2025, while Americans’ confidence in the federal judiciary as a whole “dropped to a record-low 35% in 2024.”
In his 2024 Year End Report on the Federal Judiciary, Chief Justice John Roberts identified a recent uptick in four areas of “illegitimate activity” that “threaten the independence of judges on which the rule of law depends: (1) violence, (2) intimidation, (3) disinformation, and (4) threats to defy lawfully entered judgments.” Of these, Roberts voiced particular concern about disinformation, or the “distortion of the factual or legal basis for a ruling[,]” as “undermin[ing] confidence in the court system.” He described “a new and growing concern” of “hostile foreign state actors” that, through bots and social media, “feed false information into the marketplace of ideas[,] distort[ing] judicial decisions, using fake or exaggerated narratives to foment discord within our democracy.” “[B]ecause these actors distort our judicial system in ways that compromise the public’s confidence in our processes and outcomes,” Roberts wrote, “we must as a Nation publicize the risks and take all appropriate measures to stop them.” But what are the appropriate measures judges can take to restore public confidence in the judiciary?
Recommended Citation
Alistair E. Newbern,
Promoting a Rhetoric of Judicial Legitimacy in Pro Se Litigatio,
79 Ark. L. Rev.
273
(2026).
Available at:
https://scholarworks.uark.edu/alr/vol79/iss2/6