Legal expert details the most Trump-like thing about John Roberts

FILE PHOTO: Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts arrives before the 60th Presidential Inauguration in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Monday, Jan. 20, 2025. Julia Demaree Nikhinson/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo

Chief Justice John Roberts spoke at a lawyer conference this week, where he snubbed Americans who call him political when he says that he's just following the law. One legal expert and analyst criticized Roberts for being overtly political but getting miffed when he's held accountable for it.

“I think at a very basic level, people think we’re making policy decisions, [that] we’re saying we think this is what things should be as opposed to this is what the law provides,” Roberts said, speaking in Hershey, Pennsylvania. “I think they view us as truly political actors, which I don’t think is an accurate understanding of what we do. I would say that’s the main difficulty.”

“We’re not simply part of the political process, and there’s a reason for that, and I’m not sure people grasp that as much as is appropriate,” Roberts said.

Chris Geidner wrote Thursday that Roberts has a long history of working in politics on an effort to eliminate the Voting Rights Act. Thus far, as a judge, he's put a few nails in the heart of the law.

"As chief justice of the United States, however, he oversaw the reversal of that congressional action signed into law by then-president Ronald Reagan — and, through two orders in the days since, told politicians that they are free to act quickly on it, cutting corners to do so if needed," explained Geidner.

Geidner corrected the chief justice, "No, the 'main difficulty' is for the people living with the consequences of the court’s actions."

The problem, he continued, is that Roberts' actions have become clear now that the conservative majority has reached 6-3.

He recalled that it wasn't long ago that Roberts was writing, "Surely we should adhere closely to principles of judicial restraint here..." Yet, he agreed with the conservative ruling that ensured reproductive freedom nationwide.

"It was, in other words, the very 'judicial activism' of which the right accused the legal left for so long," schooled Geidner.

He also pointed out that it was under Roberts that the Supreme Court made it possible for President Donald Trump to take a second term in office. Without the Court's decisions blocking Colorado from removing Trump from the ballot and handing him blanket "presidential immunity," Trump wouldn't be in office.

Now that Trump is in office, the Supreme Court has backed his efforts to "send people to nations where our own State Department urges Americans to stay out with virtually no legal process."

Meanwhile, Roberts has made the court more and more powerful, even though the U.S. Constitution makes it clear that the Judiciary is a coequal branch of government.

Geidner recalled Roberts writing in one ruling for the high court: “[A]gencies have no special competence in resolving statutory ambiguities. Courts do.”

That case overturned a 40-year precedent holding that scientific experts could help decide what "clean air" or "clean water" means when meeting congressional standards.

Geidner noted that the Supreme Court aims to diminish congressional authority even more this term, in a case that will overturn a 90-year precedent. Justice Sonia Sotomayor told the Justice Department: “You’re asking us to destroy the structure of government.”

protect the existence of independent agencies with for-cause removal protections for the heads of those agencies — a debate that goes all the way back to the first Congress. If that comes to pass, Roberts’s majority would, essentially, be saying that Congress has no special competence in applying the Constitution. The majority already, on the shadow docket, diminished Congress’s power of the purse.

So, the idea that the Roberts court isn't political is "simply not true," Geidner wrote.

"The court has always been a key part of the political process and is central to the political consequences of this moment," he closed. "Roberts just doesn’t like the accountability that comes along with being a part of the political process in the U.S. In that sense, this complaint from Roberts is the most Trump-like thing about him."

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