SCOTUS Chief Justice Roberts warns elected officials not to ignore Supreme Court decisions
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’These dangerous suggestions, however sporadic, must be soundly rejected,’ Roberts writes in his annual report. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts warned that elected officials should not to disregard the rulings made by the court in a report.
![[The Justices of the Supreme Court, in 2022]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/09/19/22/GettyImages-1243795147.jpg)
Roberts, who will mark 20 years at the top of the court later this year, released his year-end report where he warned of increasing attacks to the legitimacy of the court. The court has come under increased scrutiny ever since it moved to a decisive 6-3 conservative majority largely put in place by President-elect Donald Trump during his first tenure in the White House from 2017 to 2021.
“In a democracy—especially in one like ours, with robust First Amendment protections—criticism comes with the territory,” Roberts wrote. But he denounced what he considered four areas that threaten the independence of the judiciary: violence, intimidation, disinformation and threats to defy lawfully entered judgments.
The chief justice, whom former president George W Bush nominated to be chief justice in 2005 after the passing of William Rehnquist, cited the increase in violent threats against jurists. Roberts also slammed elected officials for criticizing the court too strongly.
“Public officials, too, regrettably have engaged in recent attempts to intimidate judges—for example, suggesting political bias in the judge’s adverse rulings without a credible basis for such allegations,” he wrote. In the past, Trump has blasted the chief justice for saying that judges are not partisan figures.
