For someone who’s served as chief justice of the Supreme Court for nearly two decades, John Roberts’ persistent inability to understand the role of a judge in America’s constitutional order is stunning.
On Wednesday, Roberts partook in a sit-down interview at an event in his hometown of Buffalo, New York, in which he added more fuel to the fire of the controversy surrounding the leftist-backed judicial coup seeking to sabotage the Trump administration. Throughout the discussion with his friend and District Court Judge Lawrence Vilardo, the chief justice was asked about his thoughts on “judicial independence” and whether he agrees that such a concept “is crucial.”
Roberts concurred with Vilardo’s sentiment, noting the differences between the U.S. judicial system and that of the English government during the era of America’s founding. Unlike Britain’s system, the U.S. Constitution, the chief justice said, designated “judges and the judiciary [as] a co-equal branch of government, separate from the others, with the authority to interpret the Constitution … and strike down, obviously, acts of Congress or acts of the president.”
“That innovation doesn’t work if … the judiciary’s not independent. Its job is to, obviously, decide cases, but in the course of that, check the excesses of Congress or the executive. And that does require a degree of independence,” Roberts said.
Vilardo then asked Roberts for his thoughts on “calls for impeachment of judges based on the decisions that they’ve made,” likely referencing remarks issued by President Trump and conservatives about activist judges thwarting the former’s executive actions through the use of contravening injunctions.
Nodding to a prior statement he released to legacy media outlets in March, the chief justice reaffirmed his belief that “impeachment is not how you register disagreement with decisions.”
“That’s what we’re there for,” Roberts said.
There are several problems with Roberts’ remarks.
First, neither the chief justice nor the Supreme Court plays any role in the impeachment process of federal judges. As Federalist CEO Sean Davis previously noted, “[T]he question of whether to impeach judges has been left solely to the elected representatives of the American people. John Roberts has no say in the matter, regardless of how much he wishes otherwise.”
Second, the calls to impeach radical judges like James Boasberg aren’t based on mere “disagreement” with rulings, as the chief justice asserted. They’re based on the fact that these lower court judges are issuing overreaching universal injunctions and temporary restraining orders that usurp the powers granted to the president under Article II of the Constitution to execute the law.
In no way, shape, or form does a judge have the power to unilaterally dictate to the entire executive branch whether it can medically disqualify certain individuals from military service or block deportations of foreign nationals unlawfully present in the United States. The Constitution delegates the authority to carry out such policies to the president and his administration.
Which ties into the third problem with Roberts’ remarks.
The chief justice emphasized the importance of the judiciary maintaining “independence.” Yet he completely neglected to recognize that it’s not acting independently, nor as a “co-equal” branch of government. Rather, the judiciary (including the Supreme Court) is behaving and has behaved as if it’s superior to the other branches — a power dynamic the framers emphatically rejected.
As detailed in his book Men in Black: How the Supreme Court Is Destroying America, author and conservative talk radio host Mark Levin noted how the Supreme Court (and the federal judiciary writ large) has “co-opted authority that has not been granted to them; they have usurped the authority that has been granted to Congress, the president, and the states; and they continually behave like an Olympian council.”
“From same-sex marriage, illegal immigration, and economic socialism to partial-birth abortion, political speech, and terrorists’ ‘rights,’” Levin wrote, “judges have abused their constitutional mandate by imposing their personal prejudices and beliefs on the rest of society. And we, the people, need not stand for it.”
[READ: If Anyone’s Destroying The Judiciary’s ‘Legitimacy,’ It’s Chief Justice John Roberts]
One doesn’t need a law degree to see that Levin’s arguments still hold true 20 years after they were written. As evidenced by the ongoing judicial coup to stymie Trump’s agenda, many federal judges have abdicated their roles as “independent” arbiters of the law and taken it upon themselves to distort and/or abuse it to produce their preferred policy outcomes, separation of powers be damned.
What Roberts and a majority of his SCOTUS colleagues fail to understand is that their continued allowance of (and at times, participation in) this judicial coup is only undermining Americans’ faith in the judiciary. The longer the branch’s tyrannical behavior persists, the more people will no longer view it as a trustworthy and capable institution.
And yet, for all his supposed wisdom as chief justice, that’s something Roberts just doesn’t seem to get.
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
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