Chief Justice John Roberts ended his final opinion of the Supreme Court’s just-completed term by scolding his liberal colleagues. “It has become a disturbing feature of some recent opinions to criticize the decisions with which they disagree as going beyond the proper role of the judiciary,” Roberts wrote in response to a dissenting opinion by Justice Elena Kagan — which laid out in detail how Roberts and his fellow Republican appointees had just gone far beyond the proper role of the judiciary.
Nor was Roberts the only justice this year who intimated that the justices’ rulings are beyond criticism. In an interview published by the Wall Street Journal in April, Justice Samuel Alito complained that the justices “are being hammered daily” by critics, falsely claiming that this level of disparagement is “new during my lifetime.” He also claimed that lawyers, the very people who are most educated about the courts and most capable of explaining their shortcomings, have a special obligation to defend his Court against criticism.
One year after the Court’s GOP-appointed majority overruled Roe v. Wade, the same justices behind that decision remain emboldened, apparently eager to settle old scores, and openly disdainful of those who dare to question the wisdom of their rulings. At least two of them have accepted lavish gifts from billionaires, and are contemptuous of anyone who tells them it is wrong for powerful public servants to do so.
It’s disturbing that two of the nine justices, who collectively have the final word on how to read the First Amendment, would even suggest that they should not be criticized. But it is not particularly surprising. Federal judges, who are not elected, must draw their legitimacy from the public perception that they are obedient to a legal text. Criticisms like the Kagan dissent Roberts responded so sharply to can refute that perception, and feed the rapidly growing disapproval of the Court.
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