- Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts delivered a rare public address Wednesday, asserting the independence and the importance of the judicial branch of the government.
- It is the courts' job to curb the "excesses" of Congress and the president, Roberts said.
- The remarks follow Trump's call to impeach a judge who had ruled against him on a deportation case.
U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts made a rare address to the public Wednesday at an event celebrating the 125th anniversary of Western New York’s federal court.
During the evening event, Roberts voiced unwavering support for judicial independence and stressed that, as the third branch of the government, the judicial is coequal with the other two branches.
“The judiciary is a coequal branch of government, separate from the others with the authority to interpret the Constitution as law, and strike down, obviously, acts of Congress or acts of the president,” Roberts told gathered judges, lawyers and reporters.
As such, Roberts said, the role of the Supreme Court is “to obviously decide cases, but in the course of that, check the excesses of Congress or of the executive, and that does require degree of independence.”
What does Roberts mean by ‘excesses’?
Disagreements between the highest court in the land — which is currently is governed by a 6-3 conservative majority — and U.S. President Donald Trump, a Republican, are scrutinized and debated when they arise.
Case in point: Trump and his allies have criticized judges who have blocked the administration’s agenda, including in cases related to higher education and, recently, immigration. Specifically, Trump called for the impeachment of U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, who had ordered that the Trump administration pause its efforts to deport Venezuelan migrants and rebuked the administration for invoking war powers.
Last week, the administration asked the Supreme Court to intervene against Boasberg and allow the deportation of more than 300,000 migrants to go through; the Supreme Court has not yet responded.
In March, Roberts censured Trump for calling for Boasberg’s impeachment.
“For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose,” he stated.
In his Wednesday remarks, Roberts addressed impeachment again.
“Impeachment is not how you register disagreement with decisions,” he told Judge Lawrence Vilardo, who interviewed him at the Wednesday event. Vilardo is a member of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York.
“That’s what we (the Supreme Court) are there for,” Roberts said.
Roberts called the Supreme Court the “only real political science innovation” in the U.S. Constitution.
“That innovation doesn’t work if it’s not the judiciary is not independent,” he said.