WHEN FAITH IN THE judicial system frays, it can unwind from both ends.  

People who encounter the system through its lower rungs – like district courts or one of the state’s many specialty courts that deal with substance use disorders, mental health issues, and veterans’ issues – may lose trust in justice forever if they or loved ones face a frustrating or disrespectful experience in their lowest moments. Meanwhile, the nation’s high court has increasingly become viewed as an extension of partisan political ideology rather than a more neutral interpreter of the Constitution. 

In the middle of these very local and very distant courts sits Kimberly Budd, chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.  

Before sitting in on a specialty court session in West Roxbury on Tuesday, Budd considered her changing relationship to the SJC and her worries about buy-in to state courts in a wide-ranging interview on The Codcast, six months after the chief justice warned that trust in the court system was fraying. 

“Alexander Hamilton famously called the judiciary the weakest branch of government. We wield no power of our own, but for the power that others give us by respecting our decisions,” Budd said in her December speech. “Unfortunately, today there are serious signs that respect for the courts is declining across the country.” 

Data from the National Center for State Courts – an organization of court leaders and professionals – has found that the share of people who believe that state courts provide equal justice for all “well” or “very well” has declined from 62 percent to 46 percent in the last decade, Budd said in December.  

In its most recent survey, the organization shows that the annual approval numbers are ticking up, with a caveat. Belief that state courts are doing a good or excellent job rose 3 percentage points in 2024, spurred by Republicans and independents reporting 15 points and 8 points more confidence while Democratic feeling that state courts are doing a good or excellent job dropped by 6 percentage points. 

Instilling faith in courts is a complicated nut to crack, noted Budd, who grew up in Peabody as the daughter of former Massachusetts US attorney Wayne Budd. Few people want to come into contact with the judicial system, even for jury duty, and “people may lump all courts together, across the country – state and federal. So it’s not that easy to get the message out that we really are trying to make sure that people get justice.” 

Budd, the first Black woman to serve as chief justice of the SJC, is a careful speaker – a quality she may lean into even more these days, given her association with no fewer than three institutions that have drawn the ire of President Trump: her alma mater Harvard Law School, the judiciary, and the state of Massachusetts. She didn’t mention the president, or his escalating attacks on judges, when discussing trust in the courts. 

“Here in Massachusetts, it’s business as usual,” she said. “We have a system of checks and balances, which work very well here. I feel like the three branches of government, for the most part, are all rowing in the same direction here in Massachusetts. So I’ve always seen the judiciary being independent, and certainly here in the state, and it will continue to be independent because that’s how our system’s set up.”