Judicial independence is under grave threat on several fronts, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote on Tuesday in an unusually urgent and somber year-end report on the state of the federal judiciary.
“Violence, intimidation and defiance directed at judges because of their work undermine our Republic, and are wholly unacceptable,” he wrote.
The report, which arrived in the wake of questions about the court’s ethical standards and a drop in its approval ratings, said some criticism of judges’ work is healthy, warranted and welcome.
“Unfortunately, not all actors engage in ‘informed criticism’ or anything remotely resembling it,” he wrote. “I feel compelled to address four areas of illegitimate activity that, in my view, do threaten the independence of judges on which the rule of law depends.”
One, he wrote, was “violence directed at judges for doing their jobs.” The number of hostile threats and communication directed at judges has more than tripled in the past decade, he wrote. “In extreme cases,” he added, “judicial officers have been issued bulletproof vests for public events.”
…“Public officials, too, regrettably have engaged in recent attempts to intimidate judges — for example, suggesting political bias in the judge’s adverse rulings without a credible basis for such allegations,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote, adding: “Public officials certainly have a right to criticize the work of the judiciary, but they should be mindful that intemperance in their statements when it comes to judges may prompt dangerous reactions by others.”
…A third threat to judicial independence, he wrote on Tuesday, was disinformation about the work of the courts amplified by social media. Some of it, he said, was the product of “a new and growing concern from abroad.”
“In recent years, hostile foreign state actors have accelerated their efforts to attack all branches of our government, including the judiciary,” the chief justice wrote. “In some instances, these outside agents feed false information into the marketplace of ideas. For example, bots distort judicial decisions, using fake or exaggerated narratives to foment discord within our democracy.
“In other cases, hackers steal information — often confidential and highly sensitive — for nefarious purposes, sometimes for private benefit and other times for the use of state actors themselves. Either way, because these actors distort our judicial system in ways that compromise the public’s confidence in our processes and outcomes, we must as a nation publicize the risks and take all appropriate measures to stop them.”…