We Regret to Inform You That John Roberts Is Maybe More Powerful Than Ever
During the second Trump administration, the Supreme Court’s six-justice conservative supermajority will be doing its dirty work with the political winds at its back.
On the evening of December 31, Chief Justice John Roberts published his annual end-of-year report on the federal judiciary over which he presides. As usual, the report consists of a jumble of statistics about the court system’s workload; some vague grousing about Roberts’s accumulated professional grievances; and a handful of meandering historical anecdotes, the purpose of which will be clear to anyone who remembers the imperative to hit a middle school book report length requirement. The ritual of waiting to drop the report on New Year’s Eve is a fitting tribute to the entire legal profession: a bloated, tediously-argued, sloppily-formatted PDF document that no one wants to read, filed just hours before the appointed deadline.
As Madiba Dennie explains in Balls & Strikes, Roberts’s report does not address any of the issues that normal people might clock as the Supreme Court’s urgent crises: its disappearing legitimacy, its wildly unpopular jurisprudence, its geyser of ethical scandals related to the justices’ apparent inability to leave the country without the company of a reactionary billionaire or six. Instead, Roberts took the opportunity to bemoan the epidemic of judges getting criticized “on the Internet,” which can sometimes—and here I must caution you to hold on to your pearls—lead to “angry, profane phone calls,” too. For your average Supreme Court justice, there is nothing scarier or more offensive than the prospect of a nameless assistant’s assistant’s assistant having to delete a few voicemails when they arrive at work in the morning.
Annoying as Roberts’s bitching may be, I think it functions as a grim preview of how the Court is feeling about the four years ahead: empowered by Donald Trump’s 2024 victory, entitled to transform its political agenda into constitutional law, and contemptuous of anyone who would have the temerity to point out such things in public. All of the Court’s awful triumphs of the past four years—overturning Roe, banning affirmative action, killing the administrative state, rescuing their favorite presidential candidate from criminal prosecution, and so on—came while Democrats controlled the White House, the Senate, and (for two of those years) the House of Representatives. The second Trump administration is the first time this six-justice Republican supermajority will get to do its dirty work with the political winds at its back.
What I am saying here is that before things get better, they are likely to get a lot worse. And since none of you managed to fix everything that is wrong with the legal system while I went on vacation over the holidays, we at Balls & Strikes are back at our keyboards and ready to chronicle whatever bullshit comes next. In the weeks to come, we’ll be rolling out new columns (and new columnists!) to cover the ongoing Trumpification of the judiciary, and to highlight state-level efforts to push the law to the left—or at the very least, to slow its lurch to the right. When some 28-year-old Groyper spends his Fifth Circuit confirmation hearing politely refusing to answer questions about where he was, exactly, on January 6, 2021, this website will be the place to read and get upset about it.
And in that spirit, here is your annual reminder to pitch Balls & Strikes, which will pay real American dollars for your writing! You can read our full submissions guidelines here, but the gist is that we are always looking for new writers who have good and correct opinions about how the legal system works, and just as importantly, how it doesn’t. We also want writers who like making jokes, because there is more than enough boring legal journalism in the world, and we do not need to play a role in making this crisis any worse.
Thanks for all your support of Balls & Strikes, last year and this year and, God willing, beyond. Talk to you soon.
As always, you can find everything we publish at ballsandstrikes.org, or follow us on Bluesky at @ballsandstrikes.org. You can get in touch by emailing us at contact@ballsandstrikes.org. Thanks for reading.
This Week In Balls & Strikes
John Roberts Will Say Anything to Keep His Hold On Power, Madiba Dennie
The chief justice’s annual end-of-year report is not about addressing problems with the judiciary, but is instead about ensuring that it remains unaccountable.
Jamie Raskin Understands That Democrats Need to Fight the Supreme Court, Molly Coleman
As the ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee, the outspoken Court critic gets to set the agenda for his fellow Democrats on judiciary-related issues—and prepare to chair the committee next time Democrats control the House.
Adeel Mangi Rails Against Senate Republicans For Their Bigotry—and Democrats For Their Cowardice, Madiba Dennie
Adeel Mangi’s new letter about the anti-Muslim attacks on his judicial nomination holds a mirror up to the Senate. The reflection is ugly.
This Week In Other Stuff We Appreciated
What John Roberts’s End-of-Year Report Should Have Said, Austin Sarat, MSNBC
Trump is the biggest threat to judicial independence in this country. John Roberts can’t even say his name.
John Roberts Is Imagining Things, Matt Ford, The New Republic
“Only in the chief justice’s warped, cloistered world does criticism of the high court constitute intimidation.”
This Week In Obscure Photos of Supreme Court Justices On Getty Images
Thank you Jay and team "Balls & Strikes" ! Info like this is very nearly what the general public needs to know and understand ! Sorry we couldn't finish the job.
Bastard