Chief Justice John Roberts issued a rare statement in March after President Donald Trump called for impeaching a judge who ruled against his administration. Roberts said then that impeachment “is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision.”
While seemingly not wanting to delve into the issue, the chief justice reiterated his stance Wednesday. He spoke in Buffalo, New York, with Buffalo-based U.S. District Judge Lawrence Vilardo. Vilardo raised the subject, and Roberts noted that he had “already spoken to that,” adding that impeachment “is not how you register disagreement with decisions.” (The exchange comes at about 1:40 in this clip from C-SPAN.)
Roberts didn’t mention Trump, and his comment was in keeping with other broad statements he made in Buffalo about the importance of judicial independence.
While arguably stemming from the same independent root, his appearance thus stood in contrast to Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s speech to a judicial conference in Puerto Rico earlier this month. There, the Biden appointee lamented that judges across the country “are facing increased threats of not only physical violence but also professional retaliation, just for doing our jobs.” She said that “the attacks are not random; they seem designed to intimidate those of us who serve in this critical capacity.” Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for expert analysis on the top legal stories of the week, including updates from the Supreme Court and developments in the Trump administration’s legal cases.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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