If there’s one thing that Chief Justice John Roberts loves more than stripping Black people of meaningful voting rights, it’s playing the disappointed dad act with the public. Over the last several years, Roberts has fed the media manicured sound bites as a reluctant scold, chastising the public for not understanding the Supreme Court’s very important work and getting pre-occupied with unimportant trifles like “justices taking hundreds of thousands of dollars under the table.” It’s just so TRAGIC that people care more about the Supreme Court erasing decades worth of civil rights as opposed to the real threat: hurting the Court’s public approval rating.
At the Third Circuit judicial conference, Roberts was at it again.
Roberts defended the Supreme Court from what he characterized as the public’s unfortunate misconceptions:
“I think at a very basic level, people think we’re making policy decisions, [that] we’re saying we think this is what things should be as opposed to this is what the law provides. I think they view us as truly political actors, which I don’t think is an accurate understanding of what we do.”
Yes, how could anyone mistake the Supreme Court’s conservative majority for “political actors” mere days after throwing aside decades of well-settled law to rewrite the nation’s election laws. A move that the Supreme Court took only after Democrats in California and Virginia responded to Republican gerrymandering efforts, creating a new political crisis for the Republican Party that didn’t exist over the prior 61 years. After all that time, the majority decided it was so obviously unconstitutional that they had to rush out a decision in the middle of an active election and waive its longstanding rules to make sure other states get their new maps in under the wire.
One has to wonder if Roberts prepared this speech expecting that decision to come later.
If the public views a Supreme Court staffed by justices who previously worked on stifling the 2000 Florida recount, drafted DOJ memos plotting to disenfranchise Black voters, or married Big Lie activists, as “political” that’s quite accurate really. It’s not that the justices can’t have political preferences — that’s the nature of the process at this point. But it’s one thing to be an advocate and another to be a judge. The fact that this Court consistently finds a way to rule against decades of precedent, always in line with their personal political hobby horses — often without even explaining themselves! — is how the perception of Supreme Court legitimacy sank to an all-time low.
John Roberts and company could easily write, “I wish Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act wasn’t the law, but it is and this Court has long held it constitutional, so this is a matter for Congress to change if it decides.” That’s what a judge would do. A political actor, on the other hand, would join Callais v. Louisiana.
Speaking of “without even explaining themselves,” Roberts whining about the public misunderstanding the Court’s decisions lands at a particularly ironic moment. The New York Times just published the leaked memos revealing how Roberts took the Court’s emergency docket and reimagined it as a political blunt instrument to block liberal policies without having to concoct a written justification. Using a tool that only Supreme Court nerds ever cared about to exercise the power of a superlegislature without the scrutiny made for a tidy little racket. Until the public started to notice, and now Roberts has to put on his “disappointed in us” face.
But rather than more scolding, if Roberts didn’t want to be seen as a political actor, he could consider explaining these decisions. But while lipstick is cheap, getting it on the pig is still hard.
“We’re not simply part of the political process, and there’s a reason for that, and I’m not sure people grasp that as much as is appropriate.”
“As much as is appropriate,” feels like a slip. It’s not a truth the public needs to grasp, it’s a position that an appropriately disengaged and docile public should accept. John Roberts uses his year-end reports comparing critics of the Court to cross burning. It’s like when Roberts can’t even convince himself that we’ll believe his “apolitical” nonsense, he tries to bully us into being ashamed that we’ve noticed.
“One of the things we have to do is issue decisions that are unpopular.”
Bad faith and unpopular are not the same thing. Recognizing that the First Amendment protects Nazi marches is “unpopular” but an even-handed conclusion based in law. There is a hypothetical justice — willfully shutting themselves off from history and nuance — that could embrace an absolutist position on Equal Protection and declare affirmative action unconstitutional… but that justice would, in theory, not turn around and call racial profiling “common sense.” The animating rule of this Court’s race jurisprudence is that racial discrimination is bad when it inconveniences white people and fine if it brutalizes minorities. America allows “unpopular” to stand in for “principled” far too often — sometimes unpopular things are unpopular because they’re actually wrong.
It’s not just race either. The majority declared it a dangerous assault on religious freedom for a public school to teach kids to respect their LGBTQ classmates, and turned around to bless a state mandating that every classroom display a specific sectarian translation of the Ten Commandments. A Democratic president invoking explicit statutory authority to forgive student loans is an unconstitutional power grab, a Republican president arbitrarily impounding congressionally allocated funds gets approved without comment on the shadow docket. It’s all Calvinball with the twist that Republican policy initiatives always win.
Even the decision to strike down Trump’s tariffs — a genuine result based on the clear constraints of the statutory text — only sided against Trump because the Republican Party’s free traders wanted the result. And even that was a split decision among the conservatives.
Clarence Thomas just gave a speech claiming progressives are incompatible with America. Sam Alito flies insurrection flags. Neil Gorsuch has been on Fox News multiple times this week. Meanwhile, liberal justices suggesting the Court made an ill-considered decision are made to apologize.
The Supreme Court ruled that Trump could use the military to assassinate political rivals. Can we just stop with the fucking gaslighting?
Ken White of Popehat fame has taken to calling Roberts “Temu Taney,” which is a great line, but might be too generous. History won’t remember Roberts as a cheap knockoff of Roger Taney. Roberts comes as the new and improved luxury model. Taney with better PR! Even now, there are mainstream outlets willing to pretend he’s a centrist — the man who managed to keep mainstream legal reporters calling him a centrist while he oversees the dismantling of America’s constitutional order.
But as his defenses of the Court grow more frequent, it suggest is that he knows the facade is cracking.
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.
The post John Roberts Dismayed Public Sees Supreme Court As ‘Political Actors’ Just Because They’re Political Actors appeared first on Above the Law.
If there’s one thing that Chief Justice John Roberts loves more than stripping Black people of meaningful voting rights, it’s playing the disappointed dad act with the public. Over the last several years, Roberts has fed the media manicured sound bites as a reluctant scold, chastising the public for not understanding the Supreme Court’s very important work and getting pre-occupied with unimportant trifles like “justices taking hundreds of thousands of dollars under the table.” It’s just so TRAGIC that people care more about the Supreme Court erasing decades worth of civil rights as opposed to the real threat: hurting the Court’s public approval rating.
At the Third Circuit judicial conference, Roberts was at it again.
Roberts defended the Supreme Court from what he characterized as the public’s unfortunate misconceptions:
“I think at a very basic level, people think we’re making policy decisions, [that] we’re saying we think this is what things should be as opposed to this is what the law provides. I think they view us as truly political actors, which I don’t think is an accurate understanding of what we do.”
Yes, how could anyone mistake the Supreme Court’s conservative majority for “political actors” mere days after throwing aside decades of well-settled law to rewrite the nation’s election laws. A move that the Supreme Court took only after Democrats in California and Virginia responded to Republican gerrymandering efforts, creating a new political crisis for the Republican Party that didn’t exist over the prior 61 years. After all that time, the majority decided it was so obviously unconstitutional that they had to rush out a decision in the middle of an active election and waive its longstanding rules to make sure other states get their new maps in under the wire.
One has to wonder if Roberts prepared this speech expecting that decision to come later.
If the public views a Supreme Court staffed by justices who previously worked on stifling the 2000 Florida recount, drafted DOJ memos plotting to disenfranchise Black voters, or married Big Lie activists, as “political” that’s quite accurate really. It’s not that the justices can’t have political preferences — that’s the nature of the process at this point. But it’s one thing to be an advocate and another to be a judge. The fact that this Court consistently finds a way to rule against decades of precedent, always in line with their personal political hobby horses — often without even explaining themselves! — is how the perception of Supreme Court legitimacy sank to an all-time low.
John Roberts and company could easily write, “I wish Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act wasn’t the law, but it is and this Court has long held it constitutional, so this is a matter for Congress to change if it decides.” That’s what a judge would do. A political actor, on the other hand, would join Callais v. Louisiana.
Speaking of “without even explaining themselves,” Roberts whining about the public misunderstanding the Court’s decisions lands at a particularly ironic moment. The New York Times just published the leaked memos revealing how Roberts took the Court’s emergency docket and reimagined it as a political blunt instrument to block liberal policies without having to concoct a written justification. Using a tool that only Supreme Court nerds ever cared about to exercise the power of a superlegislature without the scrutiny made for a tidy little racket. Until the public started to notice, and now Roberts has to put on his “disappointed in us” face.
But rather than more scolding, if Roberts didn’t want to be seen as a political actor, he could consider explaining these decisions. But while lipstick is cheap, getting it on the pig is still hard.
“We’re not simply part of the political process, and there’s a reason for that, and I’m not sure people grasp that as much as is appropriate.”
“As much as is appropriate,” feels like a slip. It’s not a truth the public needs to grasp, it’s a position that an appropriately disengaged and docile public should accept. John Roberts uses his year-end reports comparing critics of the Court to cross burning. It’s like when Roberts can’t even convince himself that we’ll believe his “apolitical” nonsense, he tries to bully us into being ashamed that we’ve noticed.
“One of the things we have to do is issue decisions that are unpopular.”
Bad faith and unpopular are not the same thing. Recognizing that the First Amendment protects Nazi marches is “unpopular” but an even-handed conclusion based in law. There is a hypothetical justice — willfully shutting themselves off from history and nuance — that could embrace an absolutist position on Equal Protection and declare affirmative action unconstitutional… but that justice would, in theory, not turn around and call racial profiling “common sense.” The animating rule of this Court’s race jurisprudence is that racial discrimination is bad when it inconveniences white people and fine if it brutalizes minorities. America allows “unpopular” to stand in for “principled” far too often — sometimes unpopular things are unpopular because they’re actually wrong.
It’s not just race either. The majority declared it a dangerous assault on religious freedom for a public school to teach kids to respect their LGBTQ classmates, and turned around to bless a state mandating that every classroom display a specific sectarian translation of the Ten Commandments. A Democratic president invoking explicit statutory authority to forgive student loans is an unconstitutional power grab, a Republican president arbitrarily impounding congressionally allocated funds gets approved without comment on the shadow docket. It’s all Calvinball with the twist that Republican policy initiatives always win.
Even the decision to strike down Trump’s tariffs — a genuine result based on the clear constraints of the statutory text — only sided against Trump because the Republican Party’s free traders wanted the result. And even that was a split decision among the conservatives.
Clarence Thomas just gave a speech claiming progressives are incompatible with America. Sam Alito flies insurrection flags. Neil Gorsuch has been on Fox News multiple times this week. Meanwhile, liberal justices suggesting the Court made an ill-considered decision are made to apologize.
The Supreme Court ruled that Trump could use the military to assassinate political rivals. Can we just stop with the fucking gaslighting?
Ken White of Popehat fame has taken to calling Roberts “Temu Taney,” which is a great line, but might be too generous. History won’t remember Roberts as a cheap knockoff of Roger Taney. Roberts comes as the new and improved luxury model. Taney with better PR! Even now, there are mainstream outlets willing to pretend he’s a centrist — the man who managed to keep mainstream legal reporters calling him a centrist while he oversees the dismantling of America’s constitutional order.
But as his defenses of the Court grow more frequent, it suggest is that he knows the facade is cracking.
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.
