In remarks at a judicial conference, Roberts bemoaned what he characterized as the American public’s misconceptions about the Supreme Court.
Chief Justice John Roberts on Wednesday defended the Supreme Court from what he believes are misconceptions held by the American people that he and his colleagues are “political actors” who are making decisions based on policy, not law.
Roberts is a member of the court’s 6-3 conservative majority, which has moved federal law to the right on a number of weighty issues in recent years, such as abortion and gun rights.
The court has also in several cases weakened the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965, including in a ruling last week that led to outrage and disappointment on the left.
Homeboy has been incrementally gutting the voting rights act as part of the Republican agenda for 40+ years.
https://theprogressivemedia.substack.com/p/john-roberts-spent-44-years-killing
Fuck this partisan sack garbler:
Oh fuck all the way off you political hack. You’re playing for a very specific team, and that team is not us.
Given everything they have done, why pretend anymore? I honestly don’t know who they are trying to impress. They know they are succeeding at eroding democracy. Congrats. You’re on the team now. So wear your T-shirt.
Roberts is fascinating, he really truly believes he can escape with an intact legacy while simultaneously overseeing the final destruction of the functional democracy that was the US. It kind of speaks to the mentality deep down, they don’t really understand the finality and monumentality of their actions, and where it’s going to lead us. But his legacy is secure: one of the most destructive men who was ever a part of our Republic.
Does anyone still remember that the Supreme Court - which already included a certain Clarence Thomas at the time -ensured during the 2000 election that the votes in Florida would not be recounted, thereby guaranteeing that Bush Jr. would become president?
I would certainly say that this is exactly how a political actor behaves.
Let’s also remember the deciding vote on handing the 2000 election to the devil, which lost, was the now lionized Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Notorious indeed. You can draw a straight line from their successful steal of 2000 to 2020 and now.
I think most people have soured a bit on Ginsberg after she refused to retire, only to die under Trump
Fun fact: no member of the Supreme Court was willing to sign their name to the Bush v. Gore decision. It was instead issued per curiam, “by the court” itself.
That alone says more than enough about what kind of people they are…
The Republican justices thought December was too close to the election to do anything about Texas’s gerrymandering that favored white poeple/Republicans, but somehow last week wasn’t too close to the election to shoot down Louisiana’s changes that boosted minorities. That’s pretty clearly policy at work, not the law.
Undoing decades of settled law to strip rights from women, minorities, and everyone else. You’re damn right we view you as political. You’re a disgrace to the law and should be impeached yesterday.
“Settled law” is such a cop out. If there is any ambiguity, any question, the law should be rewritten. Anything “decided” can be “undecided”, why take the chance?
Of course they’re political, but the legislative should be drafting legislation at a quality that the SC only CAN touch it very lightly.
The whole process is broken, I guess is my point, and SC latitude is a symptom of shitty and lazy legislators.
That’s bullshit, there’s always room for interpretation of any law. Especially when laws start overlapping and someone has to decide which law takes precedence.
The real failure of the US political system is that voters that were stupid enough to believe that uncompromising is the same as strength. Once bipartisanship collapsed, the only way to get anything done was through the courts because as soon as any law passed someone somewhere sued to stop it. The courts became political because all laws passed through them.
This happened because Republicans realized their actual policies are unpopular and don’t work, so they have specifically been stacking courts with conservative judges for decades so an unelected cabal of rich assholes get to decide all the laws in the country.
I hear you.
There is always leeway. Any language is imprecise, it’s the nature of the human condition. We agree on that.
Where we disagree seems to be what to do about it.
I don’t mean to strawman you here, so please correct me… but it seems like you’re saying “since legislators certainly will produce inexact wording in thier legislation that is open to interpretation… we just need to live with that and throw ourselves at the mercy of an unelected body with lifetime appointments. The problem is the lifetime appointees aren’t benevolent”
I’M saying “since legislators certainly will produce inexact wording in thier legislation that is open to interpretation… it is thier continually duty to explicitly update, amend, and otherwise refine the law so that it most explicitly describes the intention of the elected legislative branch. The problem is they have the power to ammend the legislation, and are the right people to do it because they are accountable to the electorate, but do not execute a core function of thier responsibility”
Like, make those fuckers work. Writing the law is thier job. If people can’t agree on what it means, make them re-write it until they do. Your PhD supervisor will send back your paper before publication covered in red ink before it gets submitted to a journal. In what world should a legislator not be held to the same standard?
Excuse me, Republican policies are very effective… at funneling our wealth to the capitalists on top.
No one is accusing them of being political actors. That’s not how the court system works. The fact that he claims that is an effort to play everyone for fools.
They are however partisan hacks.
They are however partisan hacks.
It’s worse than that, they’re actively corrupt. Robert’s or Alito’s Judicial philosophy is as irrelevant as Thomas’ racial identity; they believe in getting paid.
How fucking patronising.
The most political Supreme Court justice is trying to claim he’s not? He can pound his shadow docket up his ass sideways.
Alito and Thomas are the most political hands down, so far.
His name will forever represent the most corrupt SCOTUS in history, and he’s trying to mitigate that despicable legacy.
Just like PEDOnald will represent the worst president in history - at least so far.
He better be the worst in history, we couldn’t survive anyone worse.
I used to think that we had to add another 4 seats to the SCOTUS, but I no longer believe that. Now I think we need to add 20 seats to the Supreme Court.
We have allowed SCOTUS to remain so small so that one bad-faith president can negatively alter the course of the nation for half a century. We should increase it to 29 or 31, with rolling term limits, so every president gets to appoint a handful, but never enough to throw off the balance to any great degree.
Make it a seat for each state in the union.
nah, that’s what messed up the senate.
Comrade Pickles is right about rolling term limits. I propose 20 year terms, first two years are as a clerk to get them up to speed on SCOTUS procedure and ethics. then 18 as a justice. i haven’t decided how we choose the chief justice, maybe russian roulette. none of this “you rule the country the rest of your life” bullshit. Taft would be appalled and he was both President and chief justice. The court is currently far too small. 27 seems about right so like a new justice every year or something someone else do the math. That could make for much of the court clerkship to be future justices. WHAT FUN. If someone dies or retires during their term, there should be enough other justices to fill the court. No replacement is allowed unless the court falls below quorum, or let’s say… 14? At which point an emergency session of government is called, the party in power submits 7 new justices and the party out of power submits 6. assuming good faith from both parties (don’t start), because forgive the tautology but that’s how functional government functions (i’ll let someone else figure out mechanisms to prevent bad faith actors i’m only halfway through coffee today) all of the proposed justices will be qualified and impartial, just ideologically different.
20 is to long. Fuck them. 5 year terms. Only 1 term each.
The Senate was always designed as a wealthy check on the will of the people. We would be better off without the Senate and increasing the size of Congress dramatically.
I think that expanding the court should work a certain way, but to preface: I am assuming that the US is broken into four major cooperative territories, each with a president, with their own regional courts and executives. However, there would also be a figurehead president elected by the regional presidents, whose vote is confirmed by their regional voters. The figurehead represents national policy and acts as a face for it.
00000
The national court draws 4 justices from each region’s court system, and has an additional justice appointed by each president. These only lasting while that executive holds office. This means 16 national justices that are chosen by their judiciaries, and 5 appointed by executives. 21 in all.
Toss in term and age limits. We want age limits to prevent mental degradation or the social stratification that comes from age. Term limits help ensure that justices can’t remain too long, inviting corruption. I would say 10 years is reasonable for the judiciary justices. The executive justices picked by a president can’t have more than two terms for this position, so they can last up to 8 years if picked twice by presidents. This should allow for a reasonable amount of ‘churn’ in viewpoints, while still allowing the supreme court to have coherence.
The checks and balances comes from different factions - regions and administrations - sending representatives to assert their interests. Hopefully, this prevents the courts from being overly stacked for too long.
Just a reminder that between his Ivy League connections, his Reagan/Bush services, and Chief Justice Rehnquist’s untimely demise, Mr. Non-Political-Actor here went from mere well-placed attorney to Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States in less than five years, mostly by way of his work on Bush v. Gore in 2000.
Not a political actor, lol.
Roberts belief that he can salvage the courts reputation is deeply pathetic. He wiped his ass with the law and made the supremes courts corruption even more brazen.
Is it true?
Could I really have lost touch with the tenets of this office?
No. it’s the citizens who are wrong.
Awww, did some nasty journalist say that you volunteer to wear a leash for Trump daily? Diddums. You used to think you were cleverly manipulating the constitution behind the scenes for your own political ends and were being subtle about it, but now everyone says you’re his bitch and you know full well he’s a moron who shouldn’t be in charge of you, so you lost any self respect you ever had because you realised Trump has no less contempt for you than he has for any temporarily useful stupid idiot who swallowed his lies and was used by him to cement power and stroke his own ego.
