U.S. Supreme Court: It's Everyone Else's Fault!

Chief Justice John Roberts blames everyone but himself and the Court for its historic loss of credibility.

It’s like the criminal defendant who stands before the sentencing judge and argues: “The jury is obviously biased. I’ve done nothing wrong. Surely you can see they are out to get me.”

That’s the gist of U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Robert’s 2024 Year End Report on the Federal Judiciary.

He fails to acknowledge the Court has stumbled badly with respect to its ethical obligations to the American public in recent years.

Instead, Roberts focuses on “areas of illegitimate activity” that he said are undermining the heart of the court, judicial Independence. These areas include violence, intimidation, disinformation, and threats to defy lawfully entered judgments.

The Court has always faced headwinds. However, Americans trusted that the justices were ethical, nonpartisan and independent. What happened to that?

A recent Gallup Poll shows public confidence in the judiciary and courts fell by 24 points since 2020, which is “among the steepest declines Gallup has measured globally” since it began measuring the category in 2006.

Only 35% of Americans have trust in the courts, which is 20 points lower than the median for the 38 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Until 2020, Americans’ perceptions of their courts were in line with the median for OECD.

Something is obviously wrong with the court system. Is Chief Justice Roberts going to just ignore this?

In recent years, the Court failed to reign in egregious corruption by federal judges, refused to adopt an ethics code with actual teeth, and reaffirmed its refusal to broadcast court hearings to enable the public to watch it at work.

Incredibly, the Court refuses to appoint an independent (or at least disinterested) authority to handle complaints of judicial misconduct. So complaints can be - and are - decided by the errant judge’s friends, allies and co-conspirators.