Supreme Court: Judging 20 years of Roberts

Chief Justice John Roberts — This term will be the Roberts court’s “most consequential yet”

(Image credit: Erin Schaff / The New York Times / Bloomberg via Getty Images)

John Roberts has now spent two decades “dismantling American democracy,” said David Faris in Newsweek. Sworn in as the Supreme Court’s chief justice in fall 2005, the George W. Bush appointee pledged to be a neutral umpire who “calls balls and strikes.” Instead, the conservative-dominated Roberts court has systematically “aggrandized its own power and that of the Republican Party.” It dismantled campaign finance laws with 2010’s Citizens United, opening a path for billionaires to buy power; gutted the Voting Rights Act with 2013’s Shelby County; and rolled back women’s rights by overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022. “But perhaps the gravest blow to American democracy was delivered in 2024” when the court ruled—in an opinion written by Roberts himself—that presidents enjoy “presumptive immunity” for almost all their official acts. The ruling ended multiple prosecutions of Donald Trump and gave him “a green light to engage in virtually unlimited corruption and law-breaking” when he returned to office in January. “This nightmare situation is Roberts’ doing.”

For conservatives, Roberts’ tenure has been a triumph, said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial. His court has issued “strong and significant” rulings defending the First Amendment, including that religious business owners can’t be forced by Obamacare to cover what they view as abortion medications, and reasserted the right to bear arms. Yet there’s no “clear judicial philosophy” linking Roberts’ decisions, said Damon Root in Reason. He’s sometimes restrained presidential overreach—blocking President Joe Biden from forgiving student loans and President Trump from ending a program that shields young migrants from deportation—and sometimes enabled it. There’s no telling “which version of the chief justice will emerge” in the new court term that began last week.

This term will be the Roberts court’s “most consequential yet,” said Noah Feldman in Bloomberg. It will decide whether Trump can seize tariff powers from Congress, fire Federal Reserve governors at will, and erase birthright citizenship from the Constitution. Don’t expect Roberts to rein in “the wannabe authoritarian,” said Jackie Calmes in the Los Angeles Times. A court that last month empowered federal agents to racially profile and detain anyone they suspect of being in the U.S. illegally—“the Fourth Amendment be damned”—is not one that will defy Trump. “Not since the pro-slavery Taney court before the Civil War has a Supreme Court been so wrong for its moment in history.”