Chief Justice Roberts defends judicial independence, rejects impeachment talk

BUFFALO, N.Y. >> Chief Justice John Roberts defended the independence of the judiciary and denounced any attempt to impeach judges over disagreements with their rulings during rare public remarks on Wednesday evening.

“Impeachment is not how you register disagreement with a decision,” the chief justice told a crowd of about 600 people, mainly lawyers and judges, gathered in Buffalo, his hometown.

The remarks were his first since issuing a similar, though also unusual, written statement in March in response to threats by President Donald Trump and his allies to impeach federal judges who have issued decisions against administration policies.

The chief justice did not mention the president directly in his comments Wednesday, and he did not elaborate further in his answer about threats of impeachment, which he gave in response to a direct question during an event to commemorate the 125th anniversary of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York.

But the commentary was nevertheless notable given that justices typically avoid weighing in on political matters. His comments came less than a week after Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson denounced attacks on the judiciary during remarks at a conference for judges held in Puerto Rico.

Jackson criticized what she called “relentless attacks” on judges, as well as an environment of harassment that “ultimately risks undermining our Constitution and the rule of law.”

“ Across the nation, judges are facing increased threats of not only physical violence, but also professional retaliation just for doing our jobs,” Jackson said.

Roberts spoke during an hourlong conversation with U.S. District Court Judge Lawrence J. Vilardo, a longtime friend, who at one point asked the chief justice to expound on his views on judicial independence.

“It’s central,” Roberts responded. He added that the job of the judiciary was “to obviously decide cases but in the course of that to check the excesses of Congress or the executive, and that does require a degree of independence.”

At that, the crowd applauded.

Roberts’ public appearance came at a time of intense pressure on the justices as they navigate a flurry of emergency applications arising from court challenges to Trump administration policies, including cases dealing with ending birthright citizenship, freezing more than $1 billion in foreign aid and deporting Venezuelan migrants to a Salvadoran prison for terrorists without due process.

It also came as federal judges throughout the country face scrutiny from the administration, particularly those overseeing high-profile cases challenging administration policies. Several federal and state judges were in the room Wednesday evening, listening to the chief justice’s remarks.

In mid-March, Trump called for the impeachment of a federal trial judge who had tried to pause the deportations of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador, calling the judge, James Boasberg, a “Radical Left Lunatic.” Hours later, the chief justice issued a rare public statement.

“For more than two centuries it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision,” the chief justice said then. “The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”

The statement, which did not name Trump or Boasberg, echoed two earlier moments when the chief justice has weighed in about political matters in recent years.

In 2018, he issued a statement after Trump called a judge who had ruled against his first administration’s asylum policy “an Obama judge.”

“We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges,” Roberts said in a statement then. “What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them. That independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for.”

In 2020, he criticized Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, for comments that he made during a rally at the Supreme Court while the justices heard a major abortion case.

“You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price,” Schumer had said, referring to two of Trump’s appointees, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. “You will not know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.”

The chief justice, in a statement, responded that “threatening statements of this sort from the highest levels of government are not only inappropriate, they are dangerous.”

Schumer walked his comments back the next day, saying he had meant there would be political consequences.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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