The inscrutable Chief Justice John Roberts

As a lot of the authorized media (including SCOTUSblog) reported final month, Chief Justice John Roberts provided some uncommon public remarks in an look at Rice College, rebuking private assaults on judges.

“Personally directed hostility is harmful,” he mentioned, “and it’s acquired to cease.”

The feedback got here a day and a half after President Donald Trump posted on Fact Social that the Supreme Court docket is “little greater than a weaponized and unjust Political Group” whose members are “hurting our Nation.” The president’s posts have been in response to the courtroom’s February ruling, which Roberts authored, striking down Trump’s international tariffs. Trump has additionally called Roberts and different justices, together with two he appointed, “disloyal” and “unpatriotic,” and said the choice was “not written by good individuals.”

Roberts didn’t check with any of those feedback straight at Rice – stating that non-public assaults on the judiciary have come from “not simply anybody political perspective,” and that sure criticism of the courtroom’s work is each inevitable and acceptable. “It does include the territory,” he mentioned. “It may possibly very a lot be wholesome. We don’t imagine that we’re flawless in any method. It will be significant that our choices are subjected to scrutiny, and they’re.” What involved him, he acknowledged, was when the criticism shifts from the courtroom’s authorized interpretations to people.

Naked bones as these remarks might have been, they have been nonetheless considerably exceptional coming from Roberts. Maybe greater than another justice, the chief not often speaks in public, and when he does so, he appears to studiously keep away from saying something notably memorable.

Roberts’ public service

Since he was confirmed in 2005, Roberts’ public appearances have been rare and guarded. His biographer Joan Biskupic (who wrote about him in her 2019 e book, The Chief: The Life and Turbulent Times of Chief Justice John Roberts) describes him as “his personal enigma,” a justice who has sought to “hone[]” the character of an “umpire,” looking for to guard the Supreme Court docket as an establishment whereas retaining “his private convictions largely hidden.”

The umpire reference is Roberts’ personal. At his 2005 confirmation hearing, he famously delivered what turned an oft-quoted abstract of the judicial position: “Judges will not be politicians who can promise to do sure issues in alternate for votes. … I’ll keep in mind that it’s my job to name balls and strikes, and to not pitch or bat.” The metaphor drew criticism from some authorized students who argued it was naïve and understated the discretion that judging requires, nevertheless it has served as an organizing precept for Roberts’ public persona – umpires, in spite of everything, don’t usually maintain press conferences or do many interviews.

However Roberts’ “umpire philosophy” additionally has a extra elaborate mental basis than the sports activities metaphor might recommend. In a 2006 interview with authorized scholar Jeffrey Rosen, Roberts described his choice to mannequin his tenure on Chief Justice John Marshall as a response to “the personalization of judicial politics.” From Marshall, Roberts mentioned he had realized that “private belief within the chief justice’s lack of an ideological agenda was crucial.” This institutional aim, Roberts remarked, requires the suppression of non-public ones, in the event that they exist: “What you’re making an attempt to determine — sporting black robes and, in earlier occasions, wigs — [is] that it’s not the particular person; it’s the legislation.”

One other obvious affect on Roberts is Daniel Webster, constitutional lawyer (and two-time Secretary of State) who sought to carry the Union collectively previous to the Civil Conflict. Whereas in faculty, Roberts wrote a prize-winning essay on Webster – to whom Roberts was drawn to for his “fidelity, his means to interact in politics whereas behaving as if he have been above politics … and pragmatism,” journalist Matthew Continetti noted in 2005.

On this vein, Roberts has been specific in regards to the limits he locations on his public position. In 2023, declining an invite to seem earlier than Senate Democrats over a judicial ethics scandal involving Justice Samuel Alito, he wrote that “other than ceremonial occasions, solely on uncommon events in our Nation’s historical past has a sitting Chief Justice met with legislators, even in a public setting (comparable to a Committee listening to) with members of each main political events current.”

The general public report

Considered in full, Roberts’ public statements kind a slim however constant philosophy. Throughout his year-end reports (now 21 of them), written statements, speeches at circuit conferences, and public conversations he has granted since 2005, just a few themes recur – probably the most persistent maybe being the asserted nonpartisan character of the judiciary.

Considered one of Roberts’ most referenced statements got here in November 2018, after Trump referred to a decide who dominated in opposition to the administration’s asylum coverage as an “Obama decide.” Considerably surprisingly, after a query from the Related Press about Trump’s remarks, Roberts replied in a written assertion launched by the courtroom’s Public Data Workplace. He asserted that “[w]e shouldn’t have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges. What we now have is a rare group of devoted judges doing their degree finest to do equal proper to these showing earlier than them.” Certainly, that 2018 assertion was the first time Roberts had issued (or indicated) any public criticism of Trump.  

In March 2025, following Trump’s name for the impeachment of Chief Decide James Boasberg of the  U.S. District Court docket for the District of Columbia, after Boasberg had quickly blocked the administration’s deportations, Roberts felt it essential to subject one other written assertion: “For greater than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment will not be an acceptable response to disagreement regarding a judicial choice. The traditional appellate assessment course of exists for that objective.”

Roberts’ second (and associated) chorus, famous above, is his try to differentiate between criticizing courtroom choices and attacking particular person judges. Roberts did so even earlier than the Trump administration; for example, on the College of Alabama Faculty of Regulation in 2010, after President Barack Obama criticized the Citizens United choice throughout his State of the Union deal with (and Alito mouthed the now-famous “not true” line), Roberts remarked that officers have been entitled to criticize the courtroom’s choices. However in what NPR described as “a uncommon public show of mood,” Roberts then questioned the “setting” Obama selected and the “decorum” of the event.

In his 2024 year-end report, Roberts cited 4 areas of “illegitimate exercise” – violence, intimidation, disinformation, and threats to defy courtroom orders – and wrote that as a result of “judges usually communicate solely via their choices” and “don’t name press conferences or typically subject rebuttals,” the courts are “peculiarly ill-suited” to answer disinformation about their rulings. “Public officers actually have a proper to criticize the work of the judiciary, however they need to be aware that intemperance of their statements with regards to judges might immediate harmful reactions by others,” he wrote.

And in June 2025, Roberts once more addressed threats to judges and linked them to civic ignorance. “The concept that we’re accountable for no matter any individual is indignant about — it simply doesn’t make any sense, and it’s very harmful,” he said. Roberts additionally added that “sharp” language generally present in end-of-term opinions distracts from the true nature of the courtroom’s work, and {that a} well-written dissent hones the bulk opinion moderately than merely opposing it. (One wonders what he may consider the current, viral dissent by Decide Lawrence VanDyke.)

His colleagues on the courtroom

Roberts’ public reticence can be notable in the way it contrasts with a few of his colleagues. The courtroom’s latest member, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, has been on CBS Mornings, appeared on the Grammy Awards, and even accepted invites to go on a parenting podcast and a Broadway show. Justice Sonia Sotomayor speaks ceaselessly at colleges and neighborhood occasions. Justices Neil Gorsuch and Elena Kagan have additionally given a number of interviews and appeared on podcasts.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Alito differ barely. Thomas provides only a few public speeches however tends to make pointed feedback when he does. For instance, throughout the 2021 eleventh Circuit Judicial Convention, he said that “[w]e can’t be an establishment that may be bullied into providing you with simply the outcomes you need.”

Like Thomas, Alito has spoken on the Federalist Society’s annual attorneys’ conference. He has additionally given interviews to the Wall Street Journal and delivered a speech at a Notre Dame event – although he has at times barred recordings, and on no less than one event asked a bunch establishment to not reside tweet his remarks. And in a 2023 Wall Road Journal interview, Alito was direct in a method that Roberts not often is, talking of particular person choices and saying that “[s]ome choices—and I feel that Roe and Casey fell on this class—are so egregiously mistaken, so clearly mistaken, that’s a really sturdy think about help of overruling.”

The content material of Roberts’ public remarks differs from his colleagues’ as nicely. As an illustration, whereas Jackson and Justice Amy Coney Barrett have mentioned their paths to the courtroom and experiences as a justice, notably in occasions to advertise their current books, Roberts’ feedback are nearly totally institutional. Even at Rice, his most private disclosures (recalling clerkships for Decide Henry Pleasant and then-Justice William Rehnquist in addition to his first nomination, in 1992, to the U.S. Court docket of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which lapsed with out the Senate ever holding a vote) have been associated to broader, institutional classes.

Roberts can be an outlier amongst his fellow justices for not collaborating in “book tour-palooza“: On the present courtroom, Kagan and Roberts are the one justices who haven’t both written books or presently have e book offers within the works.

An institutionalist in title solely?

After all, none of this solutions the place Roberts’ professed institutionalism and studied silence have gotten him. Or – extra importantly – the courtroom itself. 

By way of public opinion, the image is actually not rosy. When Roberts was confirmed, the courtroom’s approval score regularly exceeded 60%. This has dropped dramatically all through this tenure. Because the courtroom opened its 2025-26 time period, solely 42% of People permitted of the job the courtroom was doing, and 52% disapproved. And the partisan approval hole (79% of Republicans versus 14% of Democrats) is the most important Gallup has thus far recorded. Whereas Roberts has spent 20 years insisting there are not any Obama judges or Trump judges, the general public has apparently reached the other conclusion.

Roberts’ different aim, reaching unanimity inside the courtroom itself, has additionally yielded combined outcomes. From 2010 to 2016, unanimous rulings frequently accounted for half of the court’s decisions, with a peak of 64% throughout the 2013 time period. By the 2024-25 time period, that determine was all the way down to 42%. Whereas Roberts was within the majority in 95% of all circumstances final time period and did not write a single separate opinion, his fellow justices have thus taken a really totally different strategy. 

Lastly, Roberts’ supposed institutionalism itself has confronted appreciable criticism, with some claiming that is little greater than a farce. Again in 2019, Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse wrote that “the Roberts Court docket’s output via OT 2017-2018 … speaks to a Roberts Court docket that, removed from calling ‘balls and strikes,’ seems intractably captured by highly effective forces of special-interest affect.” Others, comparable to authorized commentator Jeffrey Toobin, at one level deemed Roberts “[t]he Supreme Court docket’s stealth hard-liner” who “has served the pursuits, and mirrored the values, of the up to date Republican Social gathering.”

A few of that is unfair. It’s true that Roberts predominantly votes with the conservative wing of the courtroom, and has written for them in a few of its most profound choices – from presidential immunity to affirmative action and voting rights. However he has damaged from them in other deeply important rulings (though in Dobbs, for instance, sought a extra slim final result versus becoming a member of the liberal wing of the courtroom). Nor can Roberts be totally blamed for the courtroom’s lack of public belief, as that is confronted by nearly every major institution in our polarized occasions.

And as for reining in his fellow justices, there’s a clear restrict to what anybody chief justice can do. Whereas the chief justice is “first among equals” and in a position to assign opinions when within the majority, he can solely affect his colleagues (or mood their coverage opinions) a lot. If sufficient of his colleagues resolve that their particular person votes matter greater than a courtroom super-majority, the umpire’s philosophy turns into simply that, a philosophy, not a tenet.

In the end, Roberts seems to deeply imagine, which his remarks at Rice underscored, that the courtroom’s legitimacy rests on the nation’s willingness to embrace it as a authorized moderately than a political establishment. Whether or not saying comparatively little and cultivating the picture of an umpire really helps to advertise this aim is an open query, however his legacy – and that of the Roberts courtroom itself – probably will depend on it.