Chief Justice John Roberts says that hostility toward judges has ‘got to stop’

By John Fritze, CNN

(CNN) — Chief Justice John Roberts warned against personal attacks on the judiciary, telling an audience Tuesday that while criticism of opinions is fair game, “personally directed hostility” is dangerous and must stop.

Roberts did not mention President Donald Trump by name and, as he so often does, he went out of his way to stress that the attacks he was referring to were coming from “not just any one political perspective.” However, the chief justice’s admonishment came weeks after Trump said that justices who ruled against his sweeping tariffs were an “embarrassment to their families.”

“The problem sometimes is that the criticism can move from a focus on legal analysis to personalities,” Roberts told an audience gathered at Rice University in Houston. “Judges around the country work very hard to get it right. And if they don’t, their opinions are subject to criticism. But personally directed hostility is dangerous and it’s got to stop.”

Trump over the weekend published a lengthy social media post decrying the court’s decision in February shutting down his emergency tariffs. Roberts wrote the decision and the majority included two justices — Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett — who Trump nominated to the bench.

“They openly disrespect the presidents who nominate them to the highest position in the land,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “This completely inept and embarrassing court was not what the Supreme Court of the United States was set up by our wonderful founders to be.”

Roberts has picked his spots with Trump carefully, rarely speaking out even as the president and White House pursued a campaign of impeaching lower court judges that ruled against him earlier in his second term. One year ago, the chief justice issued a brief statement aimed at the president’s escalating rhetoric.

“For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision,” Roberts said in a statement released by the Supreme Court. “The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”

Speaking on Tuesday, Roberts was asked about past chief justices he believed were underappreciated. He mentioned William Howard Taft, who was also a former president, and Charles Evans Hughes, who was chief during President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s effort to add justices to the Supreme Court.

Hughes notably wrote a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee pushing back on that idea, but Roberts suggested Hughes’ approach with FDR was more subtle than some had wanted. Roberts, a close observer of history, said many people wanted Hughes to “get on the radio” and fight the plan publicly.

But Hughes, Roberts said, was “savvy enough” to take a different approach.

“Instead, he’s working behind the scenes, explaining to people what this would do to the role of the court,” Roberts said. “If Hughes had taken the other position, again, I think that may not have come out the right way.”

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