Chief Justice John Roberts issued a blunt warning Friday about the danger of political meddling in the nation’s federal courts.
“The Judiciary’s power to manage its internal affairs insulates courts from inappropriate political influence and is crucial to preserving public trust in its work as a separate and co-equal branch of government,” Roberts said in his year-end report released Friday. “Decisional independence is essential to due process, promoting impartial decision-making, free from political or other extraneous influence.
The high court has become increasingly partisan in recent years with both parties jockeying to lock in sympathetic jurists inclined to support their legislative agenda. Former President Trump appointed three judges to the high court and sparked called from liberals to pack the bench in order to dilute conservative judicial power.
President Biden formed a special commission to study the issue in April, but they ultimately punted on whether they felt the packing scheme was a good idea.The Chief Justice — who has led the court since 2005 — also used the address to highlight reporting from thewhich found that 131 federal judges had overseen cases in which they had a financial interest.
“Let me be crystal clear: the Judiciary takes this matter seriously,” Roberts wrote. “We expect judges to adhere to the highest standards, and those judges violated an ethics rule,” Roberts said.
Australia Latest News, Australia Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Chief Justice John Roberts: Judges Must Be Better At Avoiding Financial Conflicts“We are duty-bound to strive for 100% compliance because public trust is essential, not incidental, to our function,” Judge Roberts said.
Read more »
Chief Justice John Roberts Pledges to Bolster Judicial EthicsChief Justice John Roberts pledged to improve ethics training and bolster internal compliance systems for the federal judiciary, citing Wall Street Journal findings that federal judges with financial conflicts improperly ruled in hundreds of cases
Read more »
Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts Stresses Need for Judicial IndependenceSupreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts said the nation’s federal courts are doing a better job of policing themselves, which he called essential for the ability of the judicial branch to maintain its independence. His annual New Year’s Eve report on the federal judiciary came at the end of a year that brought repeated calls for changes in the Supreme Court. A commission appointed…
Read more »
Chief Justice Roberts calls for better enforcement of conflict laws involving judges' stock ownershipFederal law requires judges to step aside from deciding cases involving companies in which they own stock.
Read more »
Chief justice: Judges must better avoid financial conflictsSupreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts says the federal judiciary needs to do more to ensure judges don’t participate in cases where they have financial conflicts of interest.
Read more »
Chief justice: Judges must better avoid financial conflictsSupreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts says the federal judiciary needs to do more to ensure judges don't participate in cases where they have financial conflicts of interest. Roberts made the comments as part of his annual report on the federal judiciary released Friday evening. Roberts pointed to a series of stories recently in The Wall Street Journal that found that “between 2010 and 2018, 131 federal judges participated in a total of 685 matters involving companies in which they or their families owned shares of stock.”
Read more »