Washington — Chief Justice John Roberts warned Tuesday that personal attacks on Supreme Court justices and lower court judges are “dangerous” and said hostility directed toward specific jurists has “got to stop.”
“Judges around the country work very hard to get it right and if they don’t, their opinions are subject to criticism,” Roberts said during an event at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy in Houston. “But personally directed hostility is dangerous and it’s got to stop.”
The chief justice was responding to a question from U.S. District Judge Lee Rosenthal about criticisms of the Supreme Court and its rulings. Rosenthal, who was appointed to the federal trial court in Texas by former President George H.W. Bush, thanked Roberts for his defense of lower court judges, saying judges know “you have our backs.”
Roberts acknowledged that criticisms of the Supreme Court’s decisions “come with the territory,” and sometimes come from fellow justices in the form of dissents.
“We don’t believe we’re flawless in any way and it’s important that our decisions are subjected to scrutiny, and they are,” he said.
But, Roberts continued, “the problem sometimes is that the criticism can move from a focus on legal analysis to personalities. And you see — from all over, not just any one political perspective on it — that it’s more directed in a personal way and that frankly can be actually quite dangerous.”
The chief justice’s comments come as federal judges around the country have encountered a surge of threats, many of them arising after issuing decisions against the Trump administration. President Trump and senior members of his administration have also leveled accusations against judges whose rulings they disagree with, claiming they are “far-left” and “rogue” activists.
After the Supreme Court invalidated Mr. Trump’s most sweeping tariffs last month in a 6-3 decision, the president denounced two justices he appointed for ruling against him, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, saying the decision was an “embarrassment to their families.” Roberts and the three liberal justices were also in the majority that found many of Mr. Trump’s levies to be illegal.
The president also claimed without evidence that the Supreme Court has been “swayed by foreign interests,” and said the justices in the majority were “fools and lap dogs for the RINOs and the radical left Democrats.” RINO is short for “Republicans in name only.”
Mr. Trump re-upped his attacks on the Supreme Court for its tariffs decision on Sunday, claiming in a post on Truth Social that it is “little more than a weaponized and unjust political organization.”
The Republican-appointed justices, he continued, “openly disrespect the Presidents who nominate them to the highest position in the Land, a Justice of the United States Supreme Court, and go out of their way, with bad and wrongful rulings and intentions, to prove how ‘honest,’ ‘independent,’ and ‘legitimate’ they are.”
Mr. Trump has also lambasted lower court judges by name — most recently Judge James Boasberg of the U.S. district court in Washington, D.C. Boasberg last week blocked a pair of subpoenas issued by the Justice Department to the Federal Reserve as part of an investigation into Chairman Jerome Powell. The president often criticizes Powell for failing to rapidly cut interest rates.
Boasberg, Mr. Trump claimed on social media on Sunday, is “wacky, nasty, cooked, and totally out of control.” He said the judge also suffers from “the highest level of Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
Roberts has spoken out about the attacks on the federal judiciary before, though on rare occasions. Last year, as several judges faced calls for impeachment by Mr. Trump and some Republicans in Congress because of their rulings, the chief justice said impeachment “is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision.”
In 2020, Roberts pushed back against comments from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer targeting Gorsuch and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, calling them “inappropriate” and “dangerous.”
