Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts issued a warning on Tuesday that the United States must maintain “judicial independence” just weeks before the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump.
Roberts explained his concerns in his annual report on the federal judiciary.
“It’s not the nature of the judiciary to please everyone. Most cases have winners and losers. Every administration suffers defeats in the court system—sometimes in cases with major ramifications for the executive branch or the legislature or other consequential topics,” Robert wrote in the report on 15 page. “Nevertheless, over the past several decades, court decisions, popular or not, have been followed, and the nation has avoided the gridlock that plagued the 1950s and 1960s.”
“However, over the past several years, elected officials from across the political spectrum have raised the specter of flagrant disregard for federal court decisions,” Roberts said, without naming Trump, President Biden or any specific lawmakers. “These dangerous proposals, however sporadic, must be resolutely rejected. The independence of the judiciary is worth preserving. As my late colleague Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote, an independent judiciary is ‘crucial to the rule of law in any country,’ but ‘vulnerable’ to attack; it can be broken if the social law exists to serve it is not concerned with its preservation.'”
“I urge all Americans to cherish this legacy of our founding generation and cherish its endurance,” Roberts said.
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Roberts also quoted Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, who noted that the three branches of government “must cooperate successfully” to “perform the efficient operation of a department of government designed to protect the interests of liberty through judicial impartiality and independence.”
US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Sonia Sotomayor stand in the House of Representatives ahead of President Biden’s annual State of the Union address before the joint session on March 7, 2024. (Shawn Thew-Pool/Getty Images)
“Our political system and economic strength depend on the rule of law,” Roberts wrote.
The famous Supreme Court decision on immunity written by Roberts, along with another high court decision halting efforts to disqualify Trump from the ballot, were heralded as major victories for the Republican nominee on his way to victory in the election. The immunity decision was criticized by Democrats like Biden, who later called for term limits and an enforceable ethics code after criticism over undisclosed travel and gifts from wealthy benefactors to some judges.
A handful of Democrats and one Republican lawmaker urged Biden to ignore a Trump-appointed judge’s decision to revoke the FDA’s approval of abortion the drug mifepristone last year. Biden refused to take executive action to circumvent the ruling, and the Supreme Court later granted the White House a stay allowing sales of the drug to continue.
The Supreme Court was seen in Washington, DC on February 5, 2024. (MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)
The high court’s conservative majority also ruled last year that Biden’s massive efforts to forgive student loan debt constituted an illegal use of executive power.
Roberts and Trump clashed in 2018 when the chief justice reprimanded the president for denouncing a judge who rejected his asylum policy for migrants as an “Obama judge.”
In 2020, Roberts criticized comments made by Senate Democratic leaders Chuck Schumer New York while the Supreme Court considered a high-profile abortion case.
Roberts introduced his letter on Tuesday by recounting the story of King George III. which stripped colonial judges of their lifetime appointments, an order that “was not well received”. Trump is now preparing for a second term as president with an ambitious conservative agenda, elements of which are likely to be legally challenged and end up before a court whose conservative majority includes three justices Trump appointed during his first term.
In the annual report, the chief justice generally wrote that even if court decisions are unpopular or mark the defeat of a presidential administration, other branches of government must be willing to enforce them to ensure the rule of law. Roberts pointed to the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, which downgraded the schools as requiring federal enforcement despite opposition from southern governors.
Chief Justice John Roberts, left, and Associate Justice Samuel Alito sit as they and other members of the Supreme Court sit for a group photo in the Supreme Court building on Capitol Hill Friday, Oct. 7, 2022, in Washington, DC (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
He also said that “attempts to intimidate judges over their decisions in cases are inappropriate and should be strongly opposed.”
While public officials and others have the right to criticize the rulings, they should also be aware that their statements may “incite dangerous reactions from others,” Roberts wrote.
Threats against federal judges have more than tripled over the past decade, according to statistics from the US Marshals Service. State court judges in Wisconsin and Maryland were assassinated in their homes in 2022 and 2023, Roberts wrote.
Violence, intimidation and defiance directed at judges because of their work undermine our Republic and are completely unacceptable, he wrote.
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Roberts also pointed to misinformation about court rulings as a threat to judicial independence, saying social media could increase distortions and even be used by “hostile foreign state actors” to exacerbate divisions.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
