Chief Justice John Roberts highlighted the efforts of certain elected officials and other ne’er-do-wells to undermine the independence and legitimacy of federal courts in his annual year-end report.
Echoing former Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Roberts
noted that the independent federal judiciary established in Article III and preserved for the past 235 years remains “one of the ‘crown jewels of our system of government.’” The trouble, according to Roberts, is that independence is under attack.
While figuring passionate reactions to judicial rulings as inevitable and strong criticism as occasionally warranted, Roberts stressed that “not all actors engage in ‘informed criticism’ or anything remotely resembling it.”
The chief justice noted that there exists types of “illegitimate activity” which “threaten the independence of judges on which the rule of law depends: (1) violence, (2) intimidation, (3) disinformation, and (4) threats to defy lawfully entered judgments.”
“There is of course no place for violence directed at judges for doing their job,” wrote Roberts. “Yet, in recent years, there has been a significant uptick in identified threats at all levels of the judiciary.”
Last year, the U.S. Marshals Service revealed that serious threats to federal judges had
more than doubled since 2021, driven largely by political hostilities. Roberts indicated that the data shows the “volume of hostile threats and communications directed at judges has more than tripled over the past decade.”
For instance, after a draft of the
Dobbs opinion was leaked, Nicholas John Roske of California — headed for trial in June — was apparently caught near Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s house with a gun and a knife and charged with attempted murder. Roske allegedly claimed he was going to give his life a purpose by killing the justice, reported the Washington Post.
In another instance, an Alaska man with over 80 contributions to the Democratic fundraising outfit ActBlue was charged in September with nine counts of making threats against a federal judge and 13 counts of making threats in interstate commerce. Blaze News
previously reported that Panos Anastasiou allegedly threatened to hang a specific justice from an oak tree, to lynch another, and to kill a third by “putting a bullet in his … head.” He is also accused of threatening to behead, strangle, and/or drown all six as well as gun down their family members.
After noting that judges “cannot hide, nor should they,” Roberts thanked the Marshals who protect judicial officers as well as the federal and state lawmakers who have advanced legislation protecting judges from doxxing, which the chief justice noted has been used by activist groups to intimidate judges in recent years.
On account of doxxing efforts, Marshals had to be extremely vigilant when extreme pro-abortion groups, including Ruth Sent Us and Planned Parenthood Action Fund, mobbed the homes of Justices Roberts, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, Clarence Thomas, and Neil Gorsuch in 2022.
Title 18, Section 1507, of the U.S. Code
states that it is illegal to picket or parade in or near a building housing a U.S. court or occupied by a judge, juror, witness, or court officer “with the intent of interfering with, obstructing, or impeding the administration of justice, or with the intent of influencing any judge, juror, witness, or court officer, in the discharge of his duty.”
Nevertheless, President Joe Biden and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) joined other Democrats in downplaying the intimidating post-
Dobbs protests outside of Supreme Court justices’ homes, saying they were acceptable if peaceful.
Although Roberts did not mention any particular Democratic lawmaker by name, he noted that “public officials, too, regrettably have engaged in recent attempts to intimidate judges — for example, suggesting political bias in the judge’s adverse rulings without a credible basis for such allegations.”
Rep. Jamie Raskin (Md.), the Democrat who
discussed the possibility last year of Democrats in Congress nullifying the 2024 election in the event of a Trump win, is among the radical lawmakers who have tried repeatedly to pressure and neutralize conservatives on the Supreme Court.
‘These dangerous suggestions, however sporadic, must be soundly rejected.’
In a May op-ed in the New York Times titled “How to Force Justices Alito and Thomas to Recuse Themselves in the Jan. 6 Cases,” Raskin
suggested that the Biden Department of Justice could lean on the court to help Democrats get their way.
When that didn’t work and Democrats failed to get the result they wanted from the Supreme Court in
Trump v. United States last year, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.) filed articles of impeachment against Justices Alito and Thomas with the backing of Reps. Barbara Lee, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Jamaal Bowman, and other radical Democrats.
“Disinformation, even if disconnected from any direct attempt to intimidate, also threatens judicial independence,” Roberts said in his report. “The modern disinformation problem is magnified by social media, which provides a ready channel to ‘instantly spread rumor and false information.'”
Obama hagiographer Jodi Kantor’s attempted character assassination of Justice Alito in the New York Times would likely fall into Roberts’ “disinformation” category.
Kantor’s
May 16 story concerned allegations about the Jan. 17, 2021, flying of an inverted American flag at the Alito residence — a story Robert Barnes of the Washington Post reportedly did not bother with at the time because it was clear that Justice Alito was not involved.
Blaze News previously
noted that Kantor did her best to pass off the American flag as a “Stop the Steal” symbol, to link Alito to the Jan. 6 protests, and to set the stage for arguments by critics that the Supreme Court justice should recuse himself from important Trump-related cases — arguments that Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), and other Democrats were more than happy to make.
While violence, intimidation, and falsehoods are a problem, Roberts suggested that defiance of lawful judicial decisions is another major threat to the independence of the federal judiciary.
“Within the past few years, … elected officials from across the political spectrum have raised the specter of open disregard for federal court rulings,” said Roberts. “These dangerous suggestions, however sporadic, must be soundly rejected.”
The chief justice concluded, “Violence, intimidation, and defiance directed at judges because of their work undermine our Republic, and are wholly unacceptable.”
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Judiciary, Supreme court, Scotus, John roberts, Chief justice, Clarence thomas, Alito, Courts, Judicial independence, Leftism, Democrats, Politics