Roberts, John G Jr
June 24, 2022: The Day Chief Justice Roberts Lost His Court
WASHINGTON — In the most important case of his 17-year tenure, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. found himself entirely alone. He had worked for seven months to persuade his colleagues to join him in merely chipping away at Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that established a constitutional right to abortion. But he was […]
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Supreme Court Leak Inquiry Exposes Gray Area of Press Protections
“The norms of confidentiality at the court, they’re not gentle or subtle,” said Allison Orr Larsen, a professor at William and Mary Law School who clerked for Justice David H. Souter. “They are strongly and repeatedly emphasized.” As blunt and terrifying as those warnings may be, they are informal. So are the rules that apply […]
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As Leak Theories Circulate, Supreme Court Marshal Takes Up Investigation
WASHINGTON — Maybe it was a liberal law clerk who leaked the draft opinion in the Supreme Court’s biggest case in years, hoping to gin up outrage among Democrats at the prospect of an end to legal abortions. Or it was an anti-abortion court employee fearful that the justices would end up backing away from […]
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Once Close Allies, Roberts and Alito Have Taken Divergent Paths
WASHINGTON — There was a time when Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., the author of the leaked draft opinion on abortion that rocked the nation on Monday night, was Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.’s closest ally on the Supreme Court. The two men are both products of the conservative legal movement, and they were […]
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A Supreme Court in Disarray After an Extraordinary Breach
WASHINGTON — Sources have motives, and the leaked draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade raises a question as old as the Roman Empire. Cui bono? Who benefits? Not the Supreme Court as an institution. Its reputation was in decline even before the extraordinary breach of its norms of confidentiality, with much of the nation persuaded […]
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The Problem of ‘Personal Precedents’ of Supreme Court Justices
WASHINGTON — Supreme Court justices, like most people, like to appear to be consistent. No one wants to be thought to be a flip-flopper, an opportunist or a hypocrite. That means justices try not to disavow earlier legal views, even ones that appeared in dissents, in opinions they wrote as appeals court judges, in academic […]
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Ginni Thomas’s Texts, and the Limits of Chief Justice Roberts’s Power
WASHINGTON — In the wake of revelations about incendiary text messages from Virginia Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, to the Trump White House, mostly in the weeks leading up to the Jan. 6 attack, Democrats in Congress urged Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. to take action. But the chief justice is powerless […]
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After Three Rounds, Judge Jackson Knows the Confirmation Playbook
Asked about proposals to expand the size of the Supreme Court, she said, “I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to comment on the structure or the size of the court any more than it would be for me to comment on the court’s rulings.” About the scope of presidential power: “I’m unfortunately not going […]
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With Roe at Risk, Justices Explore a New Way to Question Precedents
In 2008, in Justice Antonin Scalia’s majority opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller, which recognized an individual right to own guns under the Second Amendment, he discounted the leading precedent by focusing on its litigation history. The defendants “made no appearance in the case, neither filing a brief nor appearing at oral argument; the […]
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