supreme court Chief Justice John Roberts issued a warning Tuesday that the United States must preserve “judicial independence” just weeks before President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration.
Roberts explained his concerns in his annual report on the federal judiciary.
“It is not the nature of judicial work to make everyone happy. Most cases have a winner and a loser. Every administration suffers defeats in the court system—sometimes in cases that have major ramifications for the executive, legislative, or other consequential subjects.” Robert wrote in the 15-page report. “However, over the past several decades, court decisions have been followed, whether popular or not, and the nation has avoided the confrontations that plagued the 1950s and 1960s.”
“But over the past few years, elected officials across the political spectrum have raised the specter of outright disregard for federal court rulings,” Roberts said, without naming Trump, President Biden or any specific lawmaker. “These dangerous suggestions, however diffuse, must be soundly rejected. The independence of the judiciary is worth preserving. As my late colleague Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote, an independent judiciary is ‘essential to the rule of law in any country,’ yet it is ‘weak’ and can be It is destroyed if the law of society exists to serve it and does not take care to ensure its preservation.'”
“I urge all Americans to value this legacy of our founding generation and take pride in its resilience,” Roberts said.
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Roberts also quoted Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, who noted that the three branches of government “must work in successful cooperation” in order to “enable the effective performance of the administration of government intended to protect the interests of liberty with judicial impartiality and independence.” “.
US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor stand on the House floor before President Biden's annual State of the Union address before a joint session on March 7, 2024. (Sean Theo Paul/Getty Images)
“Our political system and economic strength depend on the rule of law,” Roberts wrote.
A prominent Supreme Court Immunity decision What Roberts penned, along with another Supreme Court decision to halt efforts to remove Trump from the ballot, were upheld as major victories on the Republican candidate's path to victory in the election. The immunity decision was criticized by Democrats like Biden, who later called for term limits and an enforceable ethics law after criticism over trips and undisclosed gifts from wealthy benefactors to some of the justices.
A few Democrats and one Republican lawmaker urged Biden to ignore a Trump-appointed judge's decision to overturn the Food and Drug Administration's approval of abortion The drug mifepristone last year. Biden declined to take executive action to override the ruling, and the Supreme Court later granted the White House a stay allowing sales of the drug to continue.
Seen at the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. on February 5, 2024. (Mandel and/AFP via Getty Images)
The Supreme Court's conservative majority also ruled last year that Biden's massive effort to forgive student loan debt constituted an unlawful use of executive power.
Roberts and Trump fell out in 2018 when the chief justice of the Supreme Court rebuked the president for convicting a judge who rejected immigrant asylum policy and calling him an “Obama judge.”
In 2020, Roberts criticized comments made by the Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer New York while the Supreme Court was hearing a high-profile abortion case.
Roberts introduced his message on Tuesday by telling a story about how King George III stripped colonial judges of their lifetime appointments, which was “not well received.” Trump is now preparing for a second term as president with an ambitious conservative agenda, elements of which will likely be legally challenged and end up before the court, whose conservative majority includes three judges appointed by Trump during his first term.
In the annual report, the chief justice generally wrote that even if the court's decisions are unpopular or represent a defeat for the presidential administration, other branches of government must be prepared to implement them to ensure the rule of law. Roberts pointed to the Brown v. Board of Education decision, which in 1954 classified schools as needing federal enforcement in the face of resistance from Southern governors.
Chief Justice John Roberts, left, and Associate Justice Samuel Alito pose as they pose with other members of the Supreme Court for a group photo at the Supreme Court building on Capitol Hill on Friday, October 7, 2022 in Washington, D.C. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
He added, “Attempts to intimidate judges because of their rulings in cases are inappropriate and must be strongly confronted.”
While government officials and others have the right to criticize the rulings, they must also be aware that their statements could “result in dangerous reactions from others,” Roberts wrote.
Threats targeting federal judges have more than tripled over the past decade, according to U.S. Marshals Service statistics. State court judges in Wisconsin and Maryland were murdered in their homes in 2022 and 2023, Roberts wrote.
“The violence, intimidation, and defiance directed against judges for their work undermines our republic, and is completely unacceptable,” he wrote.
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Roberts also pointed to misinformation about court rulings as a threat to the independence of judges, saying social media can amplify distortions and can even be exploited by “hostile foreign government actors” to exacerbate divisions.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
