![https://img.connatix.com/a7a6ddc7-2a62-4477-a2d8-4c48d3572c90/2.png]Top](https://img.connatix.com/a7a6ddc7-2a62-4477-a2d8-4c48d3572c90/2.png]Top ){kind=link}
re: John Roberts' Make Nice annual report. Eric
John Roberts Gets an F on His Annual Report
The chief justice’s year-end appraisal of the federal judiciary reads as
innocuous at first glance—it’s anything but.
By Elie
Mystal<https://www.thenation.com/authors/elie-mystal/>Twitter<https://twitter.com/@ElieNYC>
TODAY 5:00 AM
[facebook sharing button]
[twitter sharing button]
[flipboard sharing button]
[pocket sharing button]
[email sharing button]
* Print
* Bookmark
[John Roberts
2020]<https://www.thenation.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/AP20151175816296.jpg>
Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court John Roberts. (Leah Millis /
Pool via AP)
Subscribe To The Nation
Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month!
<https://subscribe.thenation.com/flex/NA/key/CEM/>
Every December, the chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
composes a “Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary.” Despite the apparent
ambition indicated by its title, it is meant to be boring. It is meant to be
anodyne. It is not supposed to be the judicial version of the State of the
Union so much as a trite message about how “great” things are going on the
bench, usually with some boilerplate stats that show how hard judges are
working.
On first read, John Roberts’s 2021 review does not disappoint. Opening with a
history lesson about the Judicial Conference—an advisory body founded 100 years
ago that oversees the administration of the courts—it has all the stylistic
markings the media consistently praises Roberts for: It is good-natured,
reassuring, and banal to the point of hokey. Never mind that things are far
from OK within the judiciary—that the judicial branch has been captured by an
army of conservative hacks and the Supreme Court has veered so sharply to the
right that even the general public has noticed, dragging its poll numbers to
record lows. Roberts’s nine-page report concerns itself with none of this. To
the untrained eye, it reads as totally innocuous.
I know better, however. Roberts’s annual review has all the charms of an old
country goose: ordinary and unassuming from a distance, but an irritable,
irascible beast that will peck your eyes out if you get too close.
[https://img.connatix.com/a7a6ddc7-2a62-4477-a2d8-4c48d3572c90/2.png]Top ;
Articles[American Roulette][Biden’s Pledges to Palestinians—a Year of
Disappointment][“If These Demands Are Not Met, We Will Be Striking by Not
Attending School”]READ
MORE<https://www.thenation.com/article/society/student-protest-covid-school/?traffic_source=Connatix>[The
Making of a Coronavirus-Criminal Presidency]READ
MORE<https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/nichols-coronavirus-criminals/?traffic_source=Connatix>[The
Past and Future of Native California]The Making of aCoronavirus‑Criminal
Presidency<https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/nichols-coronavirus-criminals/?traffic_source=Connatix>
[“If These Demands Are Not Met, We Will Be Striking by Not Attending School”]
Roberts fashions it as an earnest plea for the “institutional independence” of
the judiciary—or “the Judiciary’s power to manage its internal affairs.” Toward
this end, he extols the virtues of the Judicial Conference and the notion that
the courts can and should police themselves. But like a child who agrees to be
grounded before the full extent of their misdeeds can be revealed, Roberts
isn’t making this suggestion for some aw-shucks innocent reason. He raises the
issue of judicial independence because Congress is finally considering reining
in the rampant corruption he himself refuses to stop and punishing the ethics
violators he refuses to hold accountable. Of course Roberts wants people to
think the judiciary should police itself, because that means judges will not be
policed at all.
The issue that seems to have sparked Congress’s concern—and Roberts’s
pushback—is a scandal that rocked the judiciary last year. In September, a Wall
Street Journal investigation revealed that 131 federal judges improperly heard
cases involving companies whose shares the judge or members of the judge’s
family held. Since that initial article (which covered only cases heard between
2010 and 2018), the Journal has reported that 136 judges subsequently informed
the parties in 777 lawsuits that they should have recused themselves and that
the cases could now be reassigned to other judges or reopened. The corruption
uncovered by the Journal is a violation of a Watergate-era law that prohibits
judges (or members of their family) from owning an interest, however small, in
a company that is litigating in front of them. The violations are too numerous
to be chalked up as one-off errors and speak to a pervasive disregard for the
rules and a culture of impropriety.
Congress recognized this right away. The House held a hearing in October on
making judges’ financial disclosure forms available to the public (as they are
for elected officials), which would help interested parties identify judges who
should not be hearing their cases instead of waiting for The Wall Street
Journal (or the judges themselves) to do it. The Senate Judiciary Committee has
proposed modernizing judicial ethics rules and disclosure requirements. And
Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Pramila Jayapal have expressed
interest in legislation that would impose civil sanctions on judges who fail to
recuse themselves when they should.
Roberts refuses to brook any of this. In his year-end report, he hits back
against the possibility of congressional interference by trying to make people
believe the whole problem can be solved with more webinars. “Collectively,” he
writes, “our ethics training programs need to be more rigorous. That means more
classtime, webinars, and consultations. But it also requires greater attention
to promoting a culture of compliance, even when busy dockets keep judicial
calendars full.”
CURRENT ISSUE
[https://www.thenation.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/cover0207.jpg]<https://www.thenation.com/issue/february-7-14-2022-issue/>
View our current
issue<https://www.thenation.com/issue/february-7-14-2022-issue/>
Subscribe today and Save up to $129.
<https://subscribe.thenation.com/flex/NA/key/G0EECAT/>
Roberts takes much the same approach to what he calls “inappropriate behavior
in the judicial workplace” (which I can only assume refers to sexual
harassment, though Roberts declines to name it). Despite consistent reports of
sexual harassment and misconduct in the judicial branch, Roberts claims, not
for the first time, that “inappropriate workplace conduct is not pervasive
within the Judiciary.” He then goes on to suggest that expanded guidance and
training should resolve the few cases he is willing to admit actually happen.
What won’t be necessary is congressional interference. “I appreciate that
Members of Congress have expressed ongoing concerns on this important matter,”
he writes, before issuing a final brush-off.
Even the obviously hokey bits have troubling undertones. The report is framed
by a discussion of William Howard Taft. Roberts presents Taft as a chief
justice who, despite having been president, upheld the principles of judicial
independence. But history remembers Taft’s time on the court as one that was
terrible for workers: The man literally struck down a tax on companies that
used child labor. Taft’s most famous case is one in which he upheld the
president’s right to dismiss federal officials without Senate approval, and
let’s not forget that, as president, Taft all but refused to appoint African
Americans as federal officers and dismissed many of those who held office under
his predecessor. That’s the man Roberts chose to highlight at the end of 2021.
I’d call Roberts’s year-end statement “brazen,” but he knows that most people
in the media aren’t aware of Taft’s full history or the recusal scandal or the
options for ethics reforms. And he knows that even if people did know these
things, Democrats in Congress and the White House lack the strength or the
vision to rein him and his cohorts in.
Roberts’s cries for judicial independence are actually demands that the
judiciary be placed above accountability. I guess some branches of government
get to be more equal than others.
