Reacting to historically low opinion ratings for the Supreme Court, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. maintains that “simply because people disagree with an opinion is not a basis for criticizing the legitimacy of the court” (“Roberts says court will reopen to public, defends legitimacy,” Page A11, Sept. 11). However, the court’s disrepute is due to more than its radical judicial theories and disregard for public opinion.
Though Roberts can do nothing about the damage caused by Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell’s unprecedented methods for packing the court (in blocking the nomination of Merrick Garland in the last year of the Obama administration), the conflict-of-interest questions surrounding Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife, Ginni, could lead the chief justice to impose the same ethics rules on justices that apply to all other federal judges.
Roberts also could call out the inconsistencies of reactionary justices who use “originalist” or “textualist” constitutional interpretations only when these suit desired outcomes; for example, when these justices ignore the fact that “bearing arms” historically applied only to carrying weapons in a militia or an army; when they ignore the historical fact that the Founding Fathers would have found ludicrous the expansive “personhood” given to corporations in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby; and when Justice Samuel Alito refused to correct historical inaccuracies in his Dobbs v. Jackson opinion.
Roberts could do more than whine.
Michael Biales
Acton
To Chief Justice Roberts: Jurist, heal thy court - The Boston Globe
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