Chief Justice Roberts' Impeachment Rebuke Delegitimizes the Court in a Bid to Save it
His inclination to defend the radicals in robes burning down the judiciary — and to let cases sufficiently ripen while the entire institution rots — is stunning.
John Roberts’ Obsession With SCOTUS Legitimacy Has Severely Delegitimized It
The chief irony of Chief Justice John Roberts’ tenure at the Supreme Court is that the man so doggedly devoted to defending the judiciary has done so much to undermine it. In so doing, he has threatened not only the court’s legitimacy but the republic itself.
His latest such act wasn’t an abomination of a ruling on the level of Obamacare, the census citizenship question, or DACA; a faulty probe into a devastating leak; or a defense of the indefensible censorship-industrial complex. It was a terse three-line statement that may prove the most consequential — and corrosive — move of them all.
“For more than two centuries,” the chief justice wrote, “it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”
With that statement, the chief justice revealed not only that he suffers from the very self-aggrandizement plaguing the lower court judges but that he is either willfully blind to the brewing fire they sparked, or lacks the will to put it out. Apparently, he is content to let it spread — digging in, defending courts acting lawlessly, and deferring to the “process.” At the same time, he attacks those who would dare notice the judiciary is self-immolating by subverting representative government and demand that something be done about it.
I unpack this argument in a new piece at The Federalist.
Charlie Kirk had me on his show yesterday to discuss the crisis over universal injunctions and judicial overreach. You can listen to the full interview here, or watch in two parts by clicking the images below.
I also sat for a long-term interview as part of a new RealClearInvestigations series called “The Miller Report,” following up on my latest piece for RCI on the executive vs. judiciary battle.