Ruth Marcus: What Chief Justice Roberts misses

[Nevilledog]

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Ruth Marcus
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The Chief Justice doesn’t get it. The fault isn’t with the public that doubts the court’s legitimacy. It’s with the court acting in illegitimate ways

washingtonpost.com
Opinion | What Chief Justice Roberts misses
The Supreme Court’s relationship with public opinion is more nuanced than the chief justice’s remarks suggest.
3:32 PM · Sep 11, 2022

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/11/roberts-remarks-misunderstand-court-anger/

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https://archive.ph/rjS3M

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. says it’s wrong for people to deem the court illegitimate because its decisions are unpopular. He’s right — but his defense badly misses the point of why the court has fallen so far in public esteem.

“Simply because people disagree with an opinion is not a basis for criticizing the legitimacy of the court,” Roberts told a judicial conference in Colorado on Friday.

The chief justice’s convenient framing fails to fully capture or acknowledge what’s going on. Yes, a majority of the public is angry about the court’s decision in June to eliminate constitutional protection for the right to abortion. But the bottom-line result isn’t the only reason for the fury.

The inflamed public reaction stems also from the fact that the law changed because the court’s membership changed. The ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was the culmination of a political and politicized process to bolster the conservative majority by any means necessary. And this stacked court has — time after time, but most flagrantly in overruling Roe v. Wade — abandoned normal rules of restraint, twisted or ignored doctrine, and substituted raw power to achieve its desired result.

What liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor has aptly termed a “restless and newly constituted court” could finally work its will, and so it did. That is the very definition of an “activist court,” as Vice President Harris recently described it.

*snip*

[Walleye]

1. So oh,sure, Roberts at all our fault. It's more like a reactionary court than an activist court

And all three of the justices McConnell backed in deliberately misled the senators in their hearings

[Ray Bruns]

9. They did not mislead. They lied. They perjured themselves.

[Walleye]

10. Unfortunately true. Just like Clarence Thomas lied in his teeth

He’ been there for like what 30 years? And he’s there based on a lie

[SheltieLover]

2. Absolutely!

[Midnight Writer]

3. "My neighbor has been mad at me ever since I killed his dog and set his shed on fire."

[LakeArenal]

4. The faux misunderstanding on why we don't trust the lying corrupt justices.

[gratuitous]

5. Read your own court's opinions, John

Time and again in the last year or so, the majority has clearly decided on a desired outcome and then reverse-engineered its path to that outcome, the law and precedent be damned. That's how the public comes to conclude that your court is illegitimate, as it ignores the law and overturns precedent.

History will not judge you or your renegade band kindly, and you deserve it.

[Mr. Ected]

6. A simple case of cause and effect

Anything that happened under Trump was the product of collusion with the oligarchs and leadership of Russia. Every hire at every level lacks credibility. We know that. It's not even marginally debatable.

That's the cause. The effect is public doubt in the legitimacy of any decision the Court makes, as they are appeasing a vast minority and ignoring the actual will of the American people.

Roberts is either THAT out of touch or he's bald-faced lying. Either way, he presides over a sham.

[MagickMuffin]

7. The last three seats are by the very nature illegitimate

As MoscowMitch would say let the voters decide, which is meaningless. We don’t get to decide anything when it comes to selecting people to serve on the highest court.

[czarjak]

8. Beneficiaries of a rigged system can't have the final say on anything, Bushie.

[allegorical oracle]

11. For years in my youth I wanted to be an attorney. Gave it up because I figured I wasn't smart

enough. Now I'm really questioning how some of these clowns ever made it through... and could kick myself. I mean Sidney Powell, Pam Bondi, even Michael Cohen and Giuliani. They're not exactly geniuses.

[Cha]

12. Roberts has NO reason to be

grinning like the cat who ae the canary.. his defensive Denials Ring Hollow

Then there Freakshow Clarence & Ginni..

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