John Roberts’ Obsession With SCOTUS Legitimacy Has Severely Delegitimized It
Ending universal injunctions once and for all is the least the chief justice can do to defend not only the judiciary, but our country.
> By Ben Weingarten / March 20, 2025
https://thefederalist.com/2025/03/20/john-roberts-obsession-with-scotus-legitimacy-has-severely-delegitimized-it/
The chief irony of Chief Justice John Roberts’ tenure at the Supreme Court is that the man so doggedly devoted to defending the judiciary has done so much to undermine it. In so doing, he has threatened not only the court’s legitimacy but the republic itself.
His latest such act wasn’t an abomination of a ruling on the level of Obamacare, the census citizenship question, or DACA; a faulty probe into a devastating leak; or a defense of the indefensible censorship-industrial complex. It was a terse three-line statement that may prove the most consequential — and corrosive — move of them all.
“For more than two centuries,” the chief justice wrote, “it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”
With that statement, the chief justice revealed not only that he suffers from the very self-aggrandizement plaguing the lower court judges but that he is either willfully blind to the brewing fire or lacks the will to put it out. Apparently, he is content to let it spread — digging in, defending courts acting lawlessly, and deferring to the “process.” At the same time, he attacks those who would dare notice the judiciary is self-immolating by subverting representative government and demand that something be done about it.
The chief justice’s statement came in direct response to a Truth Social post President Donald Trump published hours earlier. There, the president called for the impeachment of D.C. District Chief Judge James Boasberg — an unelected member of the federal judiciary, as Trump emphasized. Boasberg effectively usurped the president’s power and mandate to combat illegal immigration by thwarting his policy and micromanaging his operations to deport the terrorist illegal aliens of Tren de Aragua.
Rep. Brandon Gill, R-Texas, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, introduced articles of impeachment against the judge for imperiling the nation, overstepping, and creating a “constitutional crisis” as the Trump-Roberts kerfuffle unfolded.
The self-aggrandizement lies in the chief justice’s apparent belief that he has the right and obligation to opine on the expressly political act of impeachment when that is a question for the legislative branch and ultimately the public it represents. What is absolutely “not an appropriate response” is to issue statements like his from the chambers of the Supreme Court — effectively seeking to interfere in the legislative branch’s deliberations.
Further, if you wanted to politicize the court and undermine the perception of its impartiality, what more could Chief Justice Roberts have done than to rebuke President Trump over his post? Moreover, Roberts did so after having previously attacked Trump for his 2018 comments about biased judges — while remaining silent as former President Biden flouted the court’s rulings; Biden and other Democrat leaders lambasted the Supreme Court and attacked its members; some called for their impeachment; and their followers threatened judges’ lives and courthouses with destruction.
To add insult to injury, Roberts showed animus toward a president who is party to litigation pending in lower courts almost assuredly ticketed for his own, and in fact, to litigation already sitting at the Supreme Court today — concerning the very dangerous judicial overreach to which the president’s post is referring.
The broader context here makes Roberts’ statement even more outrageous. Trump’s post alluded to “crooked” judges who have effectively colluded in unprecedented lawfare with the blue states, left-wing NGOs, and administrative state actors that have filed more than 100 lawsuits aimed at paralyzing the president. The plaintiffs have proven partially successful by bringing those cases to courts (like that of Boasberg’s D.C. District) populated with Democrat nominees who have prohibited the administration from implementing its agenda at mass scale and with reckless abandon.
[the rest at the Federalist link]