It’s been widely reported for years that Chief Justice John Roberts has altered his jurisprudence in pivotal matters before the Supreme Court to preserve what he views as the “legitimacy” of the judiciary. So, it comes as no surprise that America’s leftist media have sought to exploit that weakness by trying to bully the Bush appointee into giving them the judicial outcomes they want.
That appeared to be a major goal of an NBC News article published Thursday, which contained critical remarks from anonymous lower court judges upset that the Supreme Court won’t entertain their judicial coup against the Trump administration. While many of these unnamed judges whined about the high court’s use of the emergency docket to temporarily block injunctions on the administration’s policies, several of them noticeably directed their verbal fire at Roberts, who they argued should do more to push back against President Trump’s criticisms of the lower judiciary’s overreaching antics.
“With tensions so high, four of the judges said they believe the Supreme Court and specifically Roberts, the head of the judiciary, should do more to defend the courts,” NBC reporter Lawrence Hurley wrote. “The Supreme Court, a second judge said, is effectively assisting the Trump administration in ‘undermining the lower courts,’ leaving district and appeals court judges ‘thrown under the bus.’”
The article included additional criticisms from lower court judges of Roberts’ handling of emergency docket-related cases involving the Trump administration.
As acknowledged by Hurley, Roberts — who has both sided with and against the administration in emergency docket cases — has not been shy about voicing his dissatisfaction with Trump. Earlier this year, the chief justice issued rare remarks pushing back on the president’s call to impeach an Obama-appointed judge for his outlandish conduct in an immigration-related case before his court.
The Bush appointee had previously issued a statement in 2018 expressing disagreement with Trump’s characterization of an Obama-appointed judge as, well, an “Obama judge.” He also publicly condemned Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer in 2020 after the New York Democrat verbally threatened Associate Justices Neil Gorsuch and Kavanaugh if they didn’t rule on an abortion-related case the way he wanted.
While a few of the unnamed judges who spoke with NBC appeared less willing to criticize Roberts, the underlying goal of the article — to bully the chief justice and SCOTUS into allowing the lower courts’ judicial coup to continue delivering case outcomes they find politically advantageous — is pretty evident. And although leftist-backed smear and intimidation campaigns against the high court’s Republican appointees aren’t a new phenomenon, the perpetual belief among Democrats and their media allies that such tactics work can be attributed to Roberts himself.
It’s been well documented for years that the chief justice pays close attention to how the Supreme Court and the judiciary writ large are viewed and portrayed among the American public and media. This was quite evident during the high court’s 2012 Obamacare case.
Roberts reportedly originally sided with his fellow Republican appointees in deeming Obamacare unconstitutional but got cold feet over fears about potential public blowback should the court do so. As detailed by Mollie Hemingway and Carrie Severino in their book Justice on Trial: The Kavanaugh Confirmation and the Future of the Supreme Court, Roberts cut a deal with the court’s Democrat appointees to salvage the law instead of adhering to the Constitution.
“Whatever Chief Justice Roberts’s reasons, the result was not an improvement in the Court’s reputation,” the authors wrote. “The accepted narrative, even among those who welcomed the chief’s decision, was that he changed his legal position not on principle but in response to public pressure. … It was a regrettable outcome for anyone concerned about the legitimacy of the Court.”
The perhaps unintended consequence of the chief justice’s actions was that it telegraphed to Democrat politicians and legacy media that Roberts — and the Supreme Court as a whole — is susceptible to intense public bullying campaigns. That is, if left-wing activists and their media buddies gin up enough noise and “outrage,” they can sway Roberts’ (and potentially other Republican-appointed justices’) opinions on any given case.
When it becomes clear that a judge’s main priority is not upholding the Constitution as written but engaging in backdoor politics for PR purposes, leftists are going to exploit that to advance their ideology at every available opportunity. That’s what’s happening here with NBC’s latest report, and it’s what will continue to occur as long as Roberts keeps playing the role of a politician in a black robe.