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A whiny Chief Justice Roberts issues veiled threat as Trump’s return to power looms [1]
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Date: 2025-01-01
On Tuesday, Chief Justice Roberts issued his 2024 Year End Report on the Federal Judiciary . His main message was ‘I get that we are not free from criticism, but please play nice.’ He specifically mentioned four factors that put the federal judiciary in harm's way and damaged its authority. To wit:
Violence
Intimidation
Disinformation
Threats to defy lawfully entered judgments.
The subject and tenor of his reports raise questions such as:
Why did he focus on that?
Who was his intended audience?
And why did he make no mention of any decision the Supreme Court made in the last year?
Roberts, a well-educated man with a well-educated staff, started his annual report with a relatively lengthy history lesson. If you discount the appendix, four of the eight substantive pages of the document explain how George III’s imperious treatment of Colonial Judges led to a constitutional recognition of the importance of an independent Judiciary. He could have made the point in a couple of paragraphs. He obviously wanted to give his upcoming disapproval a thorough grounding — even if he had to over-egg the pudding.
Despite his dry language, it’s obvious that Roberts is a thin-skinned man who thinks the Supreme Court should suffer no rebuke greater than a tut-tut or a tsk-tsk.
I agree that physical violence is beyond the pale. However, if you are going to make decisions that blatantly favor a political philosophy rather than spring from a reasonable analysis of the Constitution — and if those decisions consistently benefit a few oligarchs and large corporations — and if those decisions consistently support one political party over the rights of individual voters — then Roberts will have to live with some heart-felt invective directed at the billionaire, bought-and-paid-for Court.
Roberts had the power to spike many of his most vociferous critics’ guns with a robust and enforceable ethics code for the Supremes. He didn’t. He need only look in the mirror for the source of his distress.
The Chief Justice sought to paint a picture of a federal judiciary under siege. He says that the number of threats against judges has escalated. He writes:
There is of course no place for violence directed at judges for doing their job. Yet, in recent years, there has been a significant uptick in identified threats at all levels of the judiciary. According to United States Marshals Service statistics, the volume of hostile threats and communications directed at judges has more than tripled over the past decade. In the past five years alone, the Marshals report that they have investigated more than 1,000 serious threats against federal judges.
That sounds grim. But in the internet age, I am sure the threats of violence against everybody from CEOs, to politicians, reporters, teachers, salespeople, baristas and bloggers have increased. Roberts does not provide this context.
What he does do is highlight the murder of four federal judges. However, that does little to support his case as the last of these homicides was in 1989.
He also refers to the bombing death of a federal judge’s family and the murder of two state judges. That’s bad. However, America is a nation with a murder rate greater than an other developed country. Roberts’s makes no mention of Supreme Court decisions that makes murder easier.
Nor does he address the violence-promoting philosophy of ‘stand your ground’ and the expansive interpretation of ‘castle doctrine.’ What does Roberts expect when conservative jurisprudence is ‘Shoot first. Ask questions later.’
He also mentions noisy protests near judges' homes. Irritating? Sure. Bad manners? Probably. But isn’t a bunch of people non-violently making their point a protected right? I am sure anyone who broke the law was arrested.
However, Roberts's last ask, that people who do not like decisions by the federal judiciary not threaten to disregard those decisions, is pure chutzpah. He demands that no elected officials should promise to ignore a Supreme Court decision. Yet he laid the groundwork for that diminution of the judicial branch’s authority.
Roberts started his screed by saying no king should constrain judges. Yet he, along with his five fellow conservatives, gave the president monarchical powers to do whatever the feck he wants. He now expects the next one — who has been on a four-year whine-fest about how unfair judges and the whole judicial system are — to keep his criminally immune mouth shut? In addition, once you establish that one politician is special in the eyes of the law, all of them are going to test the limits.
If the President is a king, why shouldn’t a cabinet secretary think they are a Duke? Or a Senator imagine themself as an Earl?
Talk about a clueless man living in a fortified ivory tower.
America had had some titans as Chief Justice. John Marshall , Charles Evans Hughes , and Earl Warren will make most scholars’ top three list. One that will not is John Roberts. He has failed to be great. Not just because of the convenient reasoning and sophistry of his decisions. But also because he is a weak and whiny man.
These character defects offer further proof that despite his declaration during his 2005 confirmation hearing “My job is to call balls and strikes and not to pitch or bat”, Roberts is a political animal with a MAGA thumb on the scales of justice. If he thinks his petulant plea that people treat him and his cabal with deference is going to cut any ice, he’s deluded. If he wants respect he’ll have to earn it.
He won’t. He’s not that caliber of man.
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