Chief Justice John Roberts defended the Supreme Court against accusations of partisanship on Wednesday, saying the public too often sees the justices as political actors. Speaking at the Third Circuit judicial conference in Hershey, Pa., Roberts said, "At a very basic level, people think we're making policy decisions."
He added: "We're not simply part of the political process, and there's a reason for that, and I'm not sure that people grasp that as much as is appropriate." The remarks came as the court faced heightened scrutiny over its handling of emergency appeals from the Trump administration, and as criticism of its conservative majority intensified this week after the justices agreed to fast-track their judgment striking down Louisiana's congressional map as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.
Roberts' comments fit a pattern from the court's senior and current justices in recent days. Last month, retired Justice Stephen Breyer said at Harvard Law School that he did not believe any member of the court was there to "carry out some political agenda." On Monday, Justice Amy Coney Barrett told an audience at the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas that the court's role is to uphold the rule of law, not play politics, and said, "I would encourage you to see the court as an institution that's separate from the political branches."
Barrett added that the court is "not to say that the court is perfect or that it always gets it right, but it's a different kind of thing that's not just about raw politics." The back-to-back defenses underscore how aggressively the justices are trying to draw a line between legal judgment and politics at a moment when every major ruling is being read through a partisan lens.
That is the tension Roberts could not avoid. The court can insist it is above politics, but the emergency docket and the Louisiana map case have made that claim harder for critics to accept, and the chief justice's response suggests the institution knows the burden of proof is now on it.