“Chief Justice John Roberts is maddeningly silent on the biggest issue in America: President Donald Trump’s growing lawlessness.”
New, at Law Dork:— Chris Geidner (@chrisgeidner.bsky.social) June 30, 2025 at 8:32 AM
My google-fu is not strong enough to retrieve my 2005 opinings here, but I think I have achieved a solid record: John Roberts is a bad justice whose pathetic bletherings will not outweigh his endless machinations in favor of the current Felon-in-Chief and all his Republican fellows. I’m not personally convinced Roberts is worse than Judge Taney… but at least Taney had the excuse that he couldn’t know his ‘Dread Scott compromise’ would nearly destroy the United States along with countless individual lives. ‘Just Us’ Roberts doesn’t care about the predictable consequences, as long as he believes he’s got the power and the resources to live out his remaining days in a secure 1950s-style suburban bubble.
Chris Geidner, at Law Dork — “John Roberts puts off deciding where he stands on fascism”:
… Roberts — who will have been chief justice of the United States, not just of the Supreme Court, for 20 years this fall — spent Saturday telling Americans that criticism of judges that rise to the level of “threats” are “unacceptable” because they can lead to “serious threats of violence and murder of judges just simply for doing their work.”
Accordingly, “political people” criticizing the courts must “keep that in mind,” Roberts said at a judicial conference organized by judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
Roberts is right that violent threats — and, obviously, actions — are unacceptable…
And yet, the day before Roberts’s speech, he quietly joined the Supreme Court’s purportedly procedural opinion opening the door, at least for now, to one of the most lawless actions of the Trump administration in its Miller-led efforts: Trump’s January 20 executive order purporting to end birthright citizenship.
Roberts does not see that threat of violence.
Roberts, again quietly, also joined the Supreme Court’s similar action at the start of the week, too, blocking a district court order that merely required the Trump administration to provide basic due process to people subject to deportation when the Trump administration was seeking to send them to a random country — the so-called “third country removals” that have included efforts to send people to Libya and South Sudan, two places on the State Department’s “do not travel” advisory list due to the risk of “crime, kidnapping, and armed conflict.”
Roberts did not see that threat of violence.
Roberts, despite his role as Chief Justice of the United States, has failed to act for the United States in this moment — looking less like the conservative institutionalist that he sought to present himself as for the first 15 years of his time on the court and more like a Republican senator who might say behind closed doors that he disagrees with President Donald Trump’s methods but then votes right along with the most MAGA senator.
And, on June 27 in particular, we have only Roberts’s votes to go on. He wrote nothing on the last day of opinions this term….
He wrote nothing. He apparently saw no threat of violence in allowing the federal government to “develop[] and issu[e] public guidance about the Executive’s plans to implement” an unconstitutional executive order that would tell Americans how the government plans to bar people born in America from being Americans…
The Bulwark‘s reporting on that execrable opionon — “The Supreme Court Just Made America a Dangerous Place”:
… The Court’s ruling is composed of two main parts.
The first is its declaration that it is possible that the president can contradict the plain-text reading of the Constitution by issuing an executive order doing away with birthright citizenship.
The second is that lower courts can no longer issue nationwide injunctions against blatantly unconstitutional policies imposed by the executive. Injunctions must now be created on a patchwork basis.
I want to impress upon you how dangerous this is. SCOTUS has empowered the president to impose whatever he likes—irrespective of its constitutionality—and then prevented judicial overview except at the localized level. Meaning that we will now have two sets of laws. One that operates in Red America and one that Operates in Blue America.
Separate, but unequal. A house divided against itself….
His children are now old enough to understand exactly how they were acquired (and for what purpose), and I cannot say worse than I hope they will be able to escape the ignominy of their upbringing.
A very predictable man…
Roberts ruled that the Declaration of Independence, Constitutional convention, Federalist papers, Washington, Adams, and T. Roosevelt were all wrong about the presidency, while Nixon and Trump were right.
How could he have thought that'd be well received?https://t.co/UmvrKHftly— Nicholas Grossman (@NGrossman81) September 15, 2024
RaflW
Chris Geidner is a wonderful resource on Court activity. But I disagree that Roberts hasn’t decided where he falls. The Chief Justice is just doing his damndest to try to keep his hands from appearing soiled. It’s obvious that he joined the crazed wing and anything confounding or contrary is just image manipulation.
Old Man Shadow
The Supreme Court is occupied territory. Democrats should respond to it as such.
Old School
He’s just calling balls and strikes.
JML
Ha, a friend of mine was invited to that speech that Chief Twerp Roberts gave; he skipped out on it for his own mental health. Smart fella, my friend.
Roberts is an institutionalist, but only in the sense that he believes that institutions can be used to maintain a mostly status quo that works out very nicely for the upper class and highly insulated John Roberts and the people he is interested in spending time with. He doesn’t like the way Alito and some of the more radicals on his Court are going about dismantling individual rights and so forth, but he does agree with the ends, which is why he’s almost always voting in the majority, even if it’s with a limp concurring opinion where he tries to pretend he’s not as bigoted or elitist as his fellow right-wingers.
It is almost amusing though, that the one thing Roberts prizes more than anything else is his reputation and it’s tumbling around his ears. He desperately wants to be remembered as a smart, serene, brilliant jurist who guided the Court through a difficult time in American history to land in a better place that it never would have made it to, if not for the wisdom and judgment of John Roberts, Chief. Instead he’s getting compared to the weakest, most feckless justices and Chiefs in SCOTUS history, assailed from the right from the radicals he’s enabled who still think he’s a weak coward and from the middle on left by those who understand he’s a lying sack of crap who will fiddle while the Court burns, and will only ever defend the rights of rich white male christians…
RaflW
@Old Man Shadow: There’s so much that’s wrong at the Court. But I think one zone that needs powerful pushback is on the wordless ‘shadow docket’ decisions like the one we had last week.
If a majority decision goes out with no text, no justification, no citation of law or precedent, just a wordless hand-down, I think it should be the duty of every civil society group and each citizen to just treat the decision as not existing.
If a law falls in the woods and doesn’t make a sound, does it count? NO.
(Granted, I don’t know how what I propose would work. But we are deeply into unprecedented times, so unprecedented response has to be dreamed up and done!)
Omnes Omnibus
@JML: He one of the weakest, most feckless Chief Justices in US history. Although the CJ does not have much actual power on paper over the Court. Strong CJs such as Warren or Rehnquist have been able it exert considerable influence over it. Roberts is incapable of that
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Old School:
Ladies and Gentlemen, the Chief Justice of the United States:
Angel Hernandez
And for the people here who do not get the ‘inside baseball’ reference:
youtube.com/watch?v=v4H9WqGv7v4
Big Fly
Big Fly
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
I immediately got it, and the analogy is really good.
lowtechcyclist
@RaflW:
I agree. Shadow docket cases should be limited to cases where applicable law and precedent are already clear as day, but for real-world reasons, a decision is needed immediately. A shadow docket case should not create new law, period, and thus should be ignored as precedent.
Any shadow docket decisions that do create new law, OTOH, should be ignored both as precedent and in their outcome as well.
lowtechcyclist
@Old School:
Of course, the game in question is Calvinball.
kindness
Roberts thinks he’ll never see the guillotine. He’s probably right but you never know.
tobie
I have a sneaking feeling that the ruling on Friday will open the doors for Republicans to disenfranchise millions of voters in swing districts and swing states before the 2026 election. Since there can’t be nationwide injunctions, Republicans will be able to strip citizenship from citizens at will and even if each individual citizen has the means–what an assumption!–to fight the decision, it will take months if not years for courts to resolve the matter. In the interim they will be stripped of their right to vote.
Mai Naem mobile
@JML: Roberts will go down as one of the worst Supreme Court justices of all time. He doesn’t even have an excuse. The immunity decision has got to he in the top five worst decisions of all time and he authored it. I just wonder if all these people are so out of touch they have no clue as to what’s going on in the country. Their kids go to private schools with other rich kids and then onto elite colleges with more wealthy people. Even their kids are are surrounded by security. I keep on mentioning the kids because I figure that’s one way they might encounter regular people. When do they encounter regular people who don’t kowtow to them because of their power and wealth? This doesn’t just apply to SCOTUS but the rest of the bigwigs in DC.
Mai Naem mobile
@kindness: oh, I don’t think this ends well for Roberts and his GOP pals. It won’t end up well for us but we won’t be written about in history books. Lots of history of autocratic regimes ending in a bad bad way. Romania, Iraq, Chile, Italy, Greece…. I don’t think it’ll be any different here.
JML
@Mai Naem mobile: It’s a huge issue for the judiciary as a whole, how out of touch many of them become. While judges whine constantly about how little they make, it’s only in the context of the private sector elites in the legal profession that they do poorly. A federal circuit judge makes $209K per year with excellent health care benefits and spectacular retirement options. That automatically takes them outside of the reality of the rest of the country and into the bubble and it only gets worse.
Which is why it was always so absurd to hear Clarence Thomas constantly whining about money. They’re not made about being in the 1%, they’re mad they’re not in the 0.01%
Captain C
I’m not saying Roberts and the rest of the Shitty Six should be broken on the wheel or impaled Vlad-style. They should be impeached, removed,, tried and convicted for whatever crimes we can pin on them and then sent to serve the longest possible sentences in general in a max security prison. But they sure deserve it.
rikyrah
worst court since Taney
rikyrah
@Mai Naem mobile:
No lie told
jimmiraybob
“…an executive order doing away with birthright citizenship.”
How would this not be considered amending the constitution? How does amending the constitution by malicious and arbitrary EO hold up when there is a clearly defined mechanism for amendments written into the constitution?
How does an angel dance on the head of a pin?
rikyrah
@RaflW:
I completely agree
jimmiraybob
@Captain C: “…in a max security prison.”
I vote Alligator Alcatraz.
lowtechcyclist
Um, “and for what purpose”?? Can we have some clarification on what that’s supposed to mean? Are they supposed to be the judicial version of the “Joshua Generation” that will take legal Calvinball in support of RW fascism to the next level, or something?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Robert really is starting to sound like Taney
Wapiti
@JML: I think the obscene amounts of money sloshing around is a ongoing problem for the country. We need more taxes on high incomes, and high wealth. Judges and justices should be well paid, but not the obscene levels that are out there right now.
Jeffro
to think of the things that Roberts could have done here, to preserve democracy and the rule of law, but didn’t…
…all because he was worried what might happen if the GOP lost an election or two…
…all in the service of no one but trump and no principle but power…
Mai Naem mobile
@JML: i wish there was an Undercover Boss kind of show except with a DC bigwig(preferably a GOPr) switching places with a regular working person. I would love to see some GOPr who whines about moochers taking the place of some grunt who works at a walmart job with shitty benefits. Oh, to see Marsha Blackburn trying to manage kids’ medical co-pays, school activity fees on top of repair costs on a 2003 Ford Escape+credit card payments for previous medical expenses+a high heating oil bill+rent+cell phone payment+$10 eggs and $4/gallon gas+thrift store shoes+clothes for the kids+car insurance +rental insurance…
Captain C
@jimmiraybob: Even better!
JML
Keep repeating it, nothing John Roberts hates more than being linked to the traditional example for “worst Chief Justice in US history”.
Mai Naem mobile
@jimmiraybob: i hear El Salvador has a world famous maximum security prison.
p.a.
Maybe he’s venal and stupid? Hard to have an insightful worldview with one’s head up one’s own ass. How’s the view up there John? Say high to Scammy Sammy and Campground Clarence.
lowtechcyclist
@JML:
Just call him “John Taney Roberts.” Short, sweet, makes the point.
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
I was always partial to the Dred Scott Roberts.
JML
@Mai Naem mobile: I would have loved to had a camera on management during my last time through negotiations, when they whined about how they had gotten little to no pay increases in the previous contract. As we told the mediator (because we had enough self-control not to just start screaming at those assholes) “we’re not taking a lecture on how hard they think they have it from people who drove in here in a Mercedes-Benz”. We were telling them about members working second jobs and donating plasma to pay for child care to a bunch of fuckers whose idea of hardship was going on vacation to Florida instead of Europe, and what car to buy their kid for graduation.
Man, fuck management. probably good that I changed jobs, changed unions, and wasn’t in negotiations this year… :D
rikyrah
@JML:
uh huh
uh huh
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@JML: Well except Taney though he was solving the problem of Slavery. As opposed to Roberts is who working on underpants logic and pining for country the Pilgrims imagined they would be building.
Jay
@jimmiraybob:
theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/30/trump-birthright-citizenship-naturalized-citizens
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
As you wish. ;-)
Lobo
@lowtechcyclist: And he gets to say what a ball and strike is!
Geminid
Well, this is sad. Karen Diamond, one of thirteen people injured in the firebomb attack in Boulder, Colorado June 1, has died. Diamond was 82, and she and the others were marching to raise awarenes for Israeli hostages held in Gaza.
Diamond passed away June 25 and was buried in a private ceremony. I think the story made the news today because prosecutors just added a first degree murder charge to those the perpetrator was already facing.
Belafon
@Jay:
Such as running a red light.
frosty
That was a perfect response to “calling balls and strikes”!
Omnes Omnibus
@Mai Naem mobile: Oh, rent a flat above a shop
And cut your hair and get a job
And smoke some fags and play some pool
Pretend you never went to school
But still you’ll never get it right
‘Cause when you’re laid in bed at night
Watching roaches climb the wall
If you called your dad he could stop it all
Yeah
Belafon
“Mr. Roberts, did you decide that ‘The Last Chief Justice’ sounded better than ‘The Worst Chief Justice’?”
WTFGhost
OMG, judges might get THREATS for doing their jobs, unlike migrants who fear kidnapping and entrapment, resulting in deportation, possibly to nations that are dangerous to them (or simply “dangerous, full stop”), where they might not speak the language, etc..
I’m sorry – but when your decisions *CAUSE* violence, you can’t piss and moan that you’ll have mean words spoken about you. Oh, yeah, I’m one of the freaks and weirdos, so, don’t pretend that having mean words spoken about you, and having threats made against you, shouldn’t be the same thing.
You had your chance to say “make fun, but never harm, the freaks and weirdos, nor anyone,” but, you ruled otherwise. So, if you get threats, because people speak mean words, you made the effing bed, you shat in the effing bed, don’t complain about the comfort or smell.
NotMax
@Lobo
Old saying.
There are three types of umpires.
The first says, “There and balls and there are strikes and I calls ’em as I sees ’em.”
The second says, “There and balls and there are strikes and I calls ’em as they are.”
The third says, “There and balls and there are strikes but they ain’t neither til I says so.”
.
WTFGhost
@Jeffro: That is one of the things that makes me most fury-filled about the poison-meanness of the Republicans Party. If there was some brilliant orator who had the RP fixated, that, at least, would make it understandable.
Roberts is just a pure-d white supremacist so stupid he can’t think of why “viability” is an important point in pregnancy. (“If a pregnant woman may die, pre-viability, there’s one person to save; post-viability, there are two” = enormous difference, to anyone who doesn’t see a pregnant woman as a walking incubator.
Like George W, he thinks he’s the decider, and what he says is absolute Truth, handed down from high MT Roberts.
Bill Arnold
@kindness:
He’s probably right. There are more modern methods.
E.g.
North Korea executes officials with anti-aircraft gun in new purge – report (2016), a method that is faster and more humane than having one’s head separated from one’s torso while the brain lives on for a brief while.
But only after a fair trial, conviction, and death sentence. We’re not lawless monsters!
LAC
Whining while members of your majority go to 17th – 18th century law to justify reading around the Constitution and you can only offer some weak response about judicial ethics among your body? Boy, bye…
Bill Arnold
@Captain C:
I and many many others would happily assist the campaign of someone who runs on a promise to purge MAGA from American government.
WTFGhost
@jimmiraybob: They haven’t decided the *case* yet, you see.
It’s just, a judge said “this is so obviously, plainly, illegal, I’m preventing the government from doing it, nationwide.”
Well, the ruling said they thought that was more power than a single judge should have over the president, so, now, you can only protect plaintiffs. I.e., if the judge had said Trump can’t murder you, the SCOTUS just said “he can only be forbidden from murdering the plaintiffs.”
So: no matter how obviously, objectively, unlawful an action is, only those who can afford a lawyer, and already have standing, can sue to prevent that action.
Note that you wouldn’t have standing to sue just because Trump might murder you – you’d have to know that he intended to. Then you’d have standing.
So, basically, they said “Trump can ignore birthright citizenship while we decide whether or not it’s unlawful for him to ignore birthright citizenship.”
If you look at that, and it almost breaks your brain, well… it totally should. Just like with the hypothetical example, “we’ll let Trump murder people while we decide if it’s unlawful,” when something is objectively unconstitutional, any federal judge should be able to say so, and, having said so, should be able to forbid that lawbreaking by the defendant, be it the President or a lesser officer.
It’s the only possible ruling that would make sense and it’s totally not the ruling the SCOTUS produced.
laura
Chief Justice John Roberts is the worst CJ in American history because he is aware of Taney and his decisions and went ahead and out Taney’d him in Skrmeti as just one recent example. He blows past tolerates and encourages cases be brought to the Court in his ceaseless efforts to undo and sometimes undermining settled law since reconstruction. He’s well aware that trump is a lawless and dangerous individual who is using the powers of his office and the powers of state writ large to loot, to extort, to enrich, to self-deal, to incite, to direct and order the dropping of a house on any group or individual whom he chooses. Korematsu is back, voting rights reduced to voting privileges and on I could go all damn day. Worse than Taney by any casual observer. Smug, arrogant, entitled, ruthless as fuck.
Ruckus
@Omnes Omnibus:
Roberts is incapable of that
I wonder (not a whole lot mind you) if he is incapable or just a rightwing jurist who thinks the world revolves around his checkbook pen. Or if he even has/needs a checkbook pen. Or checkbook. IOW has he been bought or is he giving himself away freely, because he seems to be a jurist who thinks that money and pompous arrogance is everything and the law, rationality, reality, takes far less than even 4th place.
I’ve wondered, during my over 3/4 of a century if this country could live in a somewhat modern world, with it’s basic tenants intact and people starving while some got so rich that there aren’t enough $100 bills in circulation to give them their bounty in cash. I’m not sure if my question has been answered but it seems like a lot of citizens are asking at least similar concepts and have similar concerns.
I have a couple questions. Does Social Security have a future? Because it’s how millions of seniors continue to live and has existed for 90 years. It’s what anyone in this country whose military I served in and which provides my healthcare – which I earned, is that going to continue? Is the current republican party trying to destroy this country because they do not seem to have any answers other than we want it all. Maybe not all republicans but many of the ones working in the political side of government seem to hold that concept – as gospel. Our country works when we all respect it. When the powerful do not – will it be destroyed?
I’m not trying to stroke fear, but this world has changed in my lifetime – a lot. Some for the better and some not so much. Healthcare is dramatically better. Housing is better. Transportation is better, both personal and public. Education is better. Most everything is better. Some in small ways, some in huge ways. Now one thing that could be better would be access for many of these things for all. And one thing that hasn’t changed much is human greed and stupidity. Both still exist and sometimes in such levels that it’s almost amazing that we’ve made any progress whatsoever.
Belafon
@Jay: And then combine this with the Roberts’ court screwing up birthright citizenship, and suddenly adults who thought they were citizens all their lives are now in trouble for voting in elections.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ruckus: He is a right wing jurist but so was Rehnquist. He doesn’t have the intellectual heft or the personal strength of will/charisma to influence of lead anyone.
Ruckus
@JML:
Some people’s lives have always rotated about money and having, first – more than enough of it, second more than you, whomever you are. We live in a relatively free country, where people are who they are and in a time when we far more often get to see exactly who and what they are. And as humans, some are and always will be greedy, for money, for being noticed and approved/appreciated and for being able to hold that over others. Now not everyone with money is like that, money being a means, not an end result, which some think money is – THE END RESULT of everything. I’d put djt in that last category.
Ruckus
@Omnes Omnibus:
Agreed!
I think we’ve likely all met people like this, I did when I worked in pro sports. Not many but still, too many.
Steve Paradis
I had to look at a J6 map to realize just how close the Supreme Court building is to the Congress.
I suppose Roberts knows just easily that mob could have come for him, and has no intention of angering its leader.
NightSky
@tobie:
We KNOW they don’t want free and fair elections in future. Stripping millions of their voting rights via stripping/challenging citizenship using DOGE’s big beautiful database, could well be their next ticket. So, how can we prepare, prevent or subvert this and other plans they have?
I’m not advocating violence or civil war, but they are waging war against us right now. “Hoping for the best in ’26 and ’28” is NOT a sufficient strategy! What can we the people DO — now and over the long-term — to preserve our citizenship, recapture our basic rights, and begin to recreate the kind of government (including the justice system) we need and want?
Do we drop leaflets in areas of the country enthralled by Fox? Do we put stark ads on Fox and in social media? Do we plan a general strike? Art works and music to reach the masses and expose the greed, lies etc? Do we work with churches and other groups and/or create orgs outside of our elected reps?___ But what key goals can the vast majority of the US pop support and what strategies are most likely to have positive effects?
I’ve never studied war, but it seems we need a multi-pronged, robust, strong plan and strategies for short and long-term success. There are millions of us who are EAGER to save our way of life and our nation — but we want to do more than protest every couple of months, write some postcards to likely voters, call our reps, write to our local papers, post online, and get involved in local communities. These are all good, but so far they have not stopped the egregious murder of our rights and our democratic way of life by an unholy alliance of the greedy, the corrupt, the paranoid racists/misogynists, and the cult members. What do we do now to STOP them ?!!!
artem1s
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
um, no. he thought he was solving the problem of the North thinking that brown people were actually, you know people, and not chattel cattle that could be bought and sold and caught and returned to slavery without due process.
Citizen Alan
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: I think he’s worse than Taney. Taney almost destroyed America over the question of slavery. Roberts inflicts harm on this nation with nearly every important issue that comes before him. I still expect to see Brown v Board of Education overturned within the next 5-10 years if this Court has its way, and Roberts will be in the majority (though I expect the opinion to be written by Thomas).
danielx
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
Not the worst umpire in MLB history? Say it ain’t so!
jimmiraybob
@WTFGhost: Thanks for the reply. I will now go meditate. Or is it medicate?