Per tradition, Chief Justice John Roberts quietly released his 2024 Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary on New Year’s Eve. Each year’s report briefly expounds on a single theme before concluding with a high-level statistical summary of the federal court’s work. The report typically garners relatively little attention, but this year was different. Some talking heads are convinced that the report is a direct jab at Donald Trump or J.D. Vance, or at least a warning to the country of the dystopian future heading our way on January 20. Others have suggested the report is an exercise in hypocrisy by a politicized Supreme Court that is unwilling to face criticism. Even the more dispassionate analyses have concluded that the report is, at its core, a condemnation of threats to judges or a call to protect judicial independence.
All of these have missed the point. The Year-End Reports are always terse, cautious, and carefully written, and the Chief Justice almost never directly states his views in full. One has to look for the hints. And this year the hints point to a real, if deliberately understated, concern about the erosion of respect for the rule of law and the country’s democratic institutions.
This year’s report is focused on describing “four areas on illegitimate activity that,” in the Chief Justice’s estimation, “threaten the independence of judges on which the rule of law depends” — violence, intimidation, disinformation, and threats to defy lawfully entered judgments. Roberts offers a depressing chronicle of recent activity in each of the four areas: violent attacks on judges and their family members, including several murders; physical intimidation and doxing of sitting judges; unfounded allegations of political bias in the wake of controversial judicial rulings; and defiance of lawfully entered judgments.
These activities not only threaten judges but undermine the rule of law. Society depends on judges applying law fairly to resolve disputes, and the coordinate branches respecting and implementing judicial decisions. As the Chief Justice recognizes, it is altogether healthy and proper to be disappointed or angered by a particular court ruling, and to work within the political system or through other valid means to promote a different vision. But the areas of illegitimate activity he describes do none of these things, instead relying on political violence and rhetoric to erode respect for the judiciary, the judicial process, and the rule of law. The tactics Roberts highlights are the tactics of schoolyard bullies: if you can’t win fairly, throw a tantrum, accuse another person of cheating, or simply run away with the ball.
Roberts is too savvy and too much of a gentleman to name the bullies directly, but they can be found on both sides of the political aisle (and this blog has recorded some of their more outrageous outbursts over the years). Still, I think his concern is far less about the behavior of individual politicians or doxxers, and more about the broader landscape that such behavior is creating.
Diminished respect for the rule of law has terrible consequences for society. It shifts the Overton window and makes previously unthinkable actions acceptable. And our society has been heading that direction for the past 15 years. It started slowly and subtly on issues of democratic governance (like bypassing ordinary legislative rules to pass the Affordable Care Act, employing the “nuclear option” to break the filibuster on judicial appointments, or refusing to bring a qualified nominee to a vote), grew to outright disdain for law enforcement and the legal system (“defund the police,” refusal to prosecute crimes), and now manifests itself in regular political violence, anti-semitic campuses, unsafe cities, and active efforts to delegitimize the Supreme Court.
Judges are not the only officials to face danger when society starts to go off the rails, but they are the proverbial canaries in the coal mine. When politicians, “activists”, and the media grant permission to the public to question a judge’s motivations only because he or she was appointed by a particular President, or to ignore judicial rulings for the sole reason that they find those rulings disagreeable, it is inevitable that violence and disrespect will follow.
The Chief Justice’s primary motivation seems to be putting a cap on our growing political nihilism. Individual judges will come and go, and the composition of the Supreme Court will change in the coming years. But the foundations of our democracy must be preserved. The Year-End Report is a polite but unmistakable reminder to all Americans to fight for those democratic values every day.
The Interdependent Third Branch 