M.D. Kittle of the Federalist critiques the US Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts.
In his brilliant dissenting opinion eviscerating the majority’s legal gymnastics on birthplace citizenship, Justice Samuel Alito warned the court not to “adopt an erroneous interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment simply out of fear of the consequences of ‘rocking the boat’ or as a reaction to current immigration policy.”
But fear and politics, it seems, drove the specious legal reasoning of the “conservatives” who joined the court’s three liberals in killing President Donald Trump’s executive order ending squatter rights citizenship. A reluctance to “rock the boat” of more than a century of bad law permeates the thinking of Chief Justice John Roberts, author of the 5-4 ruling declaring unconstitutional the campaign promise Trump kept on the first day of his second term in office.
Such cowardice in guarding the Constitution has too often marked Roberts’ tenure as the chief of the nation’s high court. From his similar constitutional contortionist act in 2020 Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California to his ridiculous reinvention of the established understanding of a “tax” in playing savior to Obamacare, Roberts has sacrificed judicial courage at the twin altars of comity and continuity.
President George W. Bush’s nominee for chief justice has described himself — and all judges — as “umpires.” They don’t make the rules, he said. They apply them.
“They make sure everybody plays by the rules. But it is a limited role. Nobody ever went to a ballgame to see the umpire,” he quipped.
His latest opinion, Trump v. Barbara, reads more like an umpire who has ignored the foul lines.
Donald J. Trump was born to rock the boat. The open border left and the Chamber of Commerce, cheap labor crowd railed against the president’s executive order aimed at “Protecting The Meaning And Value of American Citizenship.” The order asserts what many constitutional law experts — including Justice Alito — understand the 14th Amendment to mean.
