In remarks at a judicial conference, Roberts bemoaned what he characterized as the American public’s misconceptions about the Supreme Court.
Chief Justice John Roberts on Wednesday defended the Supreme Court from what he believes are misconceptions held by the American people that he and his colleagues are “political actors” who are making decisions based on policy, not law.
Roberts is a member of the court’s 6-3 conservative majority, which has moved federal law to the right on a number of weighty issues in recent years, such as abortion and gun rights.
The court has also in several cases weakened the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965, including in a ruling last week that led to outrage and disappointment on the left.
If they were making judgements based on laws and logic then they would regularly have unanimous decisions.
The fact that for each case that comes before them, it’s almost always a split decision down predictable conservative/liberal lines means that Roberts is full of shit.
misconceptions held by the American people that he and his colleagues are “political actors” who are making decisions based on policy, not law.
Maybe if they stopped acting like they were making decisions based in political ideology instead of law, the American people might have those opinions…
These fuckers are overturning settled law and acts of congress left and right. Not political actors? Bitch the political buck stops at the supreme court that much is clear.
Undoing decades of settled law to strip rights from women, minorities, and everyone else. You’re damn right we view you as political. You’re a disgrace to the law and should be impeached yesterday.
“Settled law” is such a cop out. If there is any ambiguity, any question, the law should be rewritten. Anything “decided” can be “undecided”, why take the chance?
Of course they’re political, but the legislative should be drafting legislation at a quality that the SC only CAN touch it very lightly.
The whole process is broken, I guess is my point, and SC latitude is a symptom of shitty and lazy legislators.
That’s bullshit, there’s always room for interpretation of any law. Especially when laws start overlapping and someone has to decide which law takes precedence.
The real failure of the US political system is that voters that were stupid enough to believe that uncompromising is the same as strength. Once bipartisanship collapsed, the only way to get anything done was through the courts because as soon as any law passed someone somewhere sued to stop it. The courts became political because all laws passed through them.
This happened because Republicans realized their actual policies are unpopular and don’t work, so they have specifically been stacking courts with conservative judges for decades so an unelected cabal of rich assholes get to decide all the laws in the country.
I hear you.
There is always leeway. Any language is imprecise, it’s the nature of the human condition. We agree on that.
Where we disagree seems to be what to do about it.
I don’t mean to strawman you here, so please correct me… but it seems like you’re saying “since legislators certainly will produce inexact wording in thier legislation that is open to interpretation… we just need to live with that and throw ourselves at the mercy of an unelected body with lifetime appointments. The problem is the lifetime appointees aren’t benevolent”
I’M saying “since legislators certainly will produce inexact wording in thier legislation that is open to interpretation… it is thier continually duty to explicitly update, amend, and otherwise refine the law so that it most explicitly describes the intention of the elected legislative branch. The problem is they have the power to ammend the legislation, and are the right people to do it because they are accountable to the electorate, but do not execute a core function of thier responsibility”
Like, make those fuckers work. Writing the law is thier job. If people can’t agree on what it means, make them re-write it until they do. Your PhD supervisor will send back your paper before publication covered in red ink before it gets submitted to a journal. In what world should a legislator not be held to the same standard?
Excuse me, Republican policies are very effective… at funneling our wealth to the capitalists on top.
The Republican justices thought December was too close to the election to do anything about Texas’s gerrymandering that favored white poeple/Republicans, but somehow last week wasn’t too close to the election to shoot down Louisiana’s changes that boosted minorities. That’s pretty clearly policy at work, not the law.
Roberts belief that he can salvage the courts reputation is deeply pathetic. He wiped his ass with the law and made the supremes courts corruption even more brazen.
I wonder if he genuinely thinks this. Surely he’d have to if he bothered to say so. I can’t imagine a cynical political actor would waste his energy explaining himself to a public that he isn’t accountable to. Thomas and Alito for instance don’t really say jack shit, because they don’t care what you think.
SCOTUS told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.
It was its final, most essential command.
Can someone please remind me who sold out the country to corporate interests and allowed super PACs to exist? Oh yeah, thank Chief Justice Roberts. Go fuck yourself.
Traitor says what?
Just a reminder that between his Ivy League connections, his Reagan/Bush services, and Chief Justice Rehnquist’s untimely demise, Mr. Non-Political-Actor here went from mere well-placed attorney to Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States in less than five years, mostly by way of his work on Bush v. Gore in 2000.
Not a political actor, lol.
It’s true that they’re not political actors. They’re political whores. And they’re not even high-priced whores.
walks line a duck, quacks like a duck, looks like a duck… claims it’s a zebra.
Being the leader of the highest tier of the government’s judiciary branch makes everything you do or say political, Johnny-Boy.
Is anyone else getting mighty tired of that “I don’t do politics” shtick in general? I know I am. Even more so in a time where literal nazis are using it to cover up their ideological praxis.
Spare us your denial asshole. We are knee deep in the bullshit you have created already.
