Roberts went to a judicial conference in Hershey, Pennsylvania today and complained that the public wrongly sees Supreme Court justices as “political actors.” He said people mistakenly think the court makes policy decisions rather than legal ones.
This is the same court that overturned Roe v. Wade along strict party lines. That gutted the Voting Rights Act. That gave a president near-total immunity for acts committed while in office. That handed down the Dobbs decision after a draft leaked showing the outcome was predetermined before arguments concluded.
And just two weeks ago, the New York Times published leaked internal memos from 2016 showing Roberts himself personally lobbying colleagues against the Obama administration’s climate policy riddled with errors, according to Georgetown Law professor Steve Vladeck, and described by Slate as a “petty vendetta” dressed up in formal letterhead.
The 6-3 conservative supermajority wasn’t assembled by accident. Every one of those justices was selected by Republican presidents specifically because of their judicial philosophy. The Federalist Society vetted them. Dark money groups spent hundreds of millions ensuring their confirmation. Justice Alito took a private phone call with President-elect Trump while Trump had active cases before the court.
Roberts isn’t wrong that people see the court as political. He’s wrong about why they see it that way.
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