CNN
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Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts cited the annual report weeks before President-elect Donald Trump took office to emphasize the importance of an independent judiciary and part of the argument that it ignores federal court rulings. He condemned the officials’ “dangerous” comments.
“This raises concerns that officials across the political spectrum will blatantly ignore federal court decisions,” Roberts said in a report released Tuesday by the Supreme Court. . “These dangerous proposals, however sporadic, must be firmly rejected.”
The chief justice did not provide details about which officials he had in mind, but both Republicans and Democrats have hinted in recent years that they might ignore the court’s rulings. Still, Roberts’ year-end message came just days before the Jan. 20 inauguration of a president who has repeatedly accused the federal judiciary of being rigged.
President Trump’s policies, particularly on immigration, could put the president-elect in conflict next year with the Supreme Court, which he helped establish by appointing three conservative justices during his first term.
“Every administration suffers defeats in the court system, sometimes with significant consequences,” Roberts wrote. Still, he said, “over the past several decades,” both parties have respected court rulings, and that constitutional law, like the one that arose during the civil rights era when some southern states refused court orders to integrate, He added that he had avoided confrontation.
Roberts specifically pointed to decisions by the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations to enforce school desegregation rulings. For example, in 1957, President Dwight Eisenhower sent the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock to integrate schools as officials sought to defy the Supreme Court’s ruling that segregated schools were unconstitutional.
Roberts, who also declined to be named, said it was “unfortunate” that a “public official” had “suggested political bias in the judge’s adverse ruling without any credible basis for such an allegation”. He complained that he had tried to intimidate the judge. He warned that such efforts were “inappropriate and should be firmly opposed.”
As in previous years, the Chief Justice avoided directly addressing controversies and challenges within the Supreme Court itself. They include lingering questions about ethics, a weeks-long scandal this year over a controversial flag flown on Justice Samuel Alito’s grounds, and a decline in public trust in the state. supreme court.
In a series of pre-election interviews, Vice President-elect J.D. Vance questioned his fidelity to the Supreme Court’s rulings. As previously reported by The New York Times, in a 2021 podcast, Vance told President Trump, “In response to an adverse court ruling, as Andrew Jackson did, ‘the chief justice should rule… He urged them to say, “I have passed the decision.” Now let’s force him to do it. ”
This supposed pseudoscriptive quote was issued in response to an 1832 decision regarding Native Americans that Jackson opposed.
Trump himself has frequently criticized federal courts, including the Supreme Court, over adverse rulings. A Trump campaign spokesperson said earlier this week that following a New York federal appeals court ruling that upheld a jury’s verdict that the former president sexually abused author E. denounced the weaponization.
The Democratic Party has also publicly flirted with refusing to enforce the court’s ruling. Last year, New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez suggested on CNN that the Biden administration was “ignoring” a district court ruling that would have blocked the Food and Drug Administration from administering the abortion drug mifepristone. invited criticism. The Supreme Court put that decision on hold, dismissing the case in June challenging broader access to the drug.
Mr Roberts has used his year-end report to reiterate the importance of an independent judiciary and warned against threats of violence against judges. In a similar vein two years ago, he stressed that “the justice system cannot and should not live in fear.”
Roberts added in this year’s report that “hostile foreign actors” are accelerating attacks on the judiciary and other sectors. In some cases, he said, “bots distort judicial decisions and use false and exaggerated stories to stir up discord within democracies.”
The report focuses on the end of the year, when a 6-3 conservative majority granted the former president blanket immunity from criminal prosecution, and the two cases in which President Trump was arrested before the November election. The schedule allows him to avoid a trial on federal charges. This fall, the court is delving into First Amendment challenges to the transgender care ban and TikTok’s bipartisan ban.
“The judicial branch’s role is to say what the law is,” Roberts wrote.
But, he added, “judicial independence will be undermined unless other branches are firmly held accountable for enforcing court decisions.”
