John Roberts is reportedly Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. But can this be accurate? And, if it is, where is he? Where is John Roberts during what is arguably the Supreme Court’s greatest crisis of confidence, ever?
Once upon a time the nation’s highest court was one of its most venerated institutions. Those days are gone. Now (April 2024) only 36 percent of Americans approve of the way the Supreme Court is doing its job, whereas 51 percent disapprove. Moreover, two of the nine justices are under a cloud of suspicion, suspected in both cases of extreme judicial bias and in one case of corruption. Meantime the Court’s leader, the Chief Justice, has gone MIA. So far as the American public is concerned, Roberts is missing in action.
To be clear: the Court has significant systemic problems. For example, the nine justices are appointed for life, even though life spans now are decades longer than when their forever tenures were enshrined in the Constitution. It is also true that the Chief Justice has little power over his colleagues, nearly no carrots to reward them for doing what he wants them to do; nearly no sticks to punish them if they do not. But in the past Roberts was reputed to be an institutionalist who would protect the Court against debasement first because he cared deeply about the institution, second, because he cared deeply about the law.
It cannot be known what Roberts is doing in private, behind the Court’s closed doors. But now is the time if ever there was one for him to make a gesture in public. He recently turned down an invitation to meet with Senate Democrats to discuss the Court’s ethics crisis. Further, if the Court is developing, of its own volition, new ethics rules, or new procedures, or new codes of conduct or new anything to prompt its own ethical conduct, we the American people have not been told about it.
Chief Justice John Roberts appears a leader who is exceedingly old-fashioned, steeped in tradition, buttoned-up, cautious in the extreme. But what if the moment demands a different kind of leader? What if Americans need, even crave, reassurance by word and deed that their institutions are holding fast? That under the leadership of John Roberts the Supreme Court will not succumb to the mood of the moment?
If John Roberts is so hidebound he cannot adapt even slightly, history will not judge him kindly. He will be remembered as a little leader – not big or brave enough to take on changing challenges in changing times.