Chief Justice John Roberts Blasts ‘Inappropriate Political Influence’ in Year-end Report

Chief Justice John Roberts of the U.S. Supreme Court blasted attempts to exert “inappropriate political influence” in his year-end report for 2021, as President Joe Biden and the Democrats consider proposals to expand or pack the Court with liberals.

“The Judiciary’s power to manage its internal affairs insulates courts from inappropriate political influence and is crucial to preserving public trust in its work as a separate and co- equal branch of government,” Roberts said in the 2021 report.

Roberts has defended the independence of the judiciary in the past, notably in 2020, when then-Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) threatened justices that they “will pay the price” if they rule against abortion.

On that occasion — only the latest in Schumer’s attacks on the Court — Roberts said: “Justices know that criticism comes with the territory, but threatening statements of this sort from the highest levels of government are not only inappropriate, they are dangerous.”

Now, with a decision looming in Dobbs. v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which could reverse the Court’s holding in Roe v. Wade (1973), with oral arguments Jan. 7 on Biden’s vaccine mandates, and with Democrats upset that Biden’s court-packing commission did not recommend radical changes outright, Roberts has issued a warning against political intervention.

In his report, Roberts also tackled the issue of judicial recusal, following reporting in 2021 by the Wall Street Journal that more than 130 federal judges had unlawfully failed to recuse themselves from cases in which they had financial interests. He also discussed judicial misconduct in the workplace, and the question of assigning patent cases in the federal court system.

In 2021, Roberts notably declined to preside over the Democrats’ second attempt to impeach President Donald Trump, who had already left office by the time the Senate took up the trial. He also pushed back against then-President Trump’s use of the term “Obama judge” in 2018, claiming that there are no “Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges.”

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.