WASHINGTON (AP) — Chief Justice John Roberts on Tuesday defended the independence of the judiciary, which he said is threatened by intimidation, disinformation and the possibility that officials will defy court orders.
Roberts laid out his concerns in his annual report on the federal judiciary. It was released after a year in which the country’s court system was unusually embroiled in a closely contested presidential election campaign in which then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump attacked the integrity of the judges who served had ruled against him while he was facing criminal charges for which he denied wrongdoing.
Trump won the race after a landmark Supreme Court immunity decision penned by Roberts, which, along with another Supreme Court decision halting efforts to disqualify him from the ballot, removed obstacles to his election.
The immunity decision was criticized by Democrats including President Joe Biden, who later called for term limits and an enforceable ethics code after criticizing secret trips and gifts from wealthy benefactors to some judges.
Roberts, for his part, began his letter by telling a story about how King George III. 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 challenged in court and end up before the court, whose conservative majority includes three justices appointed by Trump during his first term.
Roberts and Trump clashed in 2018 when the chief justice rebuked the president for calling a judge who rejected his migrant asylum policy an “Obama judge.”
In 2020, Roberts criticized Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer’s comments while the Supreme Court was considering a high-profile abortion case.
Roberts did not mention Trump, Biden or any other specific leader in this year’s annual report. Instead, he wrote generally that even when court decisions are unpopular or represent a defeat for a presidential administration, other branches of government must be prepared to enforce them to ensure the rule of law.
He pointed to the Brown v. Board of Education decision, which desegregated schools in 1954, as a decision that needed federal enforcement in the face of opposition from Southern governors.
“It is not in the nature of judicial work to make everyone happy,” he wrote.
The chief justice also condemned elected officials across the political spectrum who “raise the specter of open defiance of federal court rulings.”
“Attempts to intimidate judges over their decisions in cases are inappropriate and should be vigorously opposed,” he wrote.
While officials and others have the right to criticize judgments, they should also be aware that their comments may “provoke dangerous reactions from others.”
Threats against federal judges have more than tripled in the last decade, according to statistics from the U.S. Marshals Service. State judges in Wisconsin and Maryland were killed in their homes in 2022 and 2023, Roberts wrote.
“Violence, intimidation and disregard for judges because of their work undermines our republic and is completely unacceptable,” he wrote.
Roberts also noted that disinformation about court rulings posed a threat to judicial independence, saying social media amplified distortions and could even be exploited by “hostile foreign state actors” to exacerbate divisions.
Amid these widening divisions, Americans’ trust in the country’s justice system and courts has fallen to a record low of 35%, a Gallup poll has found.
