Chief Justice Roberts Reflects on Conflicts, Harassment and Judicial Independence

WASHINGTON — Amid a driblet successful public assurance successful the Supreme Court and calls for expanding its membership, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. devoted his yearly year-end study connected the national judiciary connected Friday to a plea for judicial independence.

“The judiciary’s powerfulness to negociate its interior affairs insulates courts from inappropriate governmental power and is important to preserving nationalist spot successful its enactment arsenic a abstracted and coequal subdivision of government,” helium wrote.

The study comes little than a period aft a bipartisan committee appointed by President Biden finished its enactment studying changes to the national judiciary. While that sheet analyzed proposals similar imposing 18-year word limits connected justices and expanding, oregon “packing,” the tribunal with further justices, overmuch of the main justice’s study was focused connected thwarting little contentious efforts by Congress to code financial conflicts and workplace misconduct successful the judicial system. Both issues are the taxable of projected authorities that has drawn bipartisan support.

Gabe Roth, the enforcement manager of Fix the Court, a nonprofit radical that has called for stricter morals rules for the Supreme Court, said the main justness faced an uphill battle.

“Chief Justice Roberts is taking a leafage from his old playbook: acknowledging organization challenges successful the judiciary but telling the nationalist that lone we judges tin hole them,” Mr. Roth said. “Yet the problems of overlooked fiscal conflicts and intersexual harassment are superior and endemic, and there’s nary denotation they’re going away. So Congress has each close to measurement successful and, via legislation, clasp the 3rd subdivision to account, which I expect to hap successful 2022.”

Chief Justice Roberts addressed astatine immoderate magnitude a caller bid of articles successful The Wall Street Journal that recovered that 131 national judges had violated a national instrumentality by proceeding 685 lawsuits betwixt 2010 and 2018 that progressive companies successful which they oregon their families owned shares of stock.

“Let maine beryllium crystal clear: The judiciary takes this substance seriously,” the main justness wrote. “We expect judges to adhere to the highest standards, and those judges violated an morals rule. But I bash privation to enactment these lapses successful context.”

In the strategy of things, helium wrote, the fig of violations was vanishingly small.

“According to The Wall Street Journal’s ain data,” helium wrote, “the 685 instances identified magnitude to a precise tiny fraction — little than 3 hundredths of 1 percent — of the 2.5 cardinal civilian cases filed successful the territory courts successful the 9 years included successful the study. That’s a 99.97 percent compliance rate.”

“Still,” helium wrote, “this discourse is not excuse. We are duty-bound to strive for 100 percent compliance due to the fact that nationalist spot is essential, not incidental, to our function.”

Though Chief Justice Roberts did not notation it, the Supreme Court has not been immune from akin lapses. In 2017, for instance, aft participating successful the oral arguments successful a patent case, the Supreme Court announced that Chief Justice Roberts “has concluded that helium should not proceed to enactment successful this case.”

He had discovered, the tribunal said, that helium owned 1,212 shares of the genitor institution of 1 of the parties successful the case. The shares were worthy much than $100,000, according to a fiscal disclosure report.

“The mean struggle cheque conducted successful the main justice’s chambers inadvertently failed to find this imaginable conflict,” a missive from a tribunal authoritative to lawyers successful the patent lawsuit said.

In the study issued connected Friday, Chief Justice Roberts called for much rigorous morals grooming and amended systems of struggle checks. He did not code a solution urged by galore morals experts: barring judges from investing successful idiosyncratic stocks.

Chief Justice Roberts besides touched connected what helium called “the continuing interest implicit inappropriate behaviour successful the judicial workplace.”

The contented had been a taxable successful respective of the main justice’s reports since 2017, erstwhile Judge Alex Kozinski, who had served connected the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit for much than 3 decades, announced his retirement aft The Washington Post reported that immoderate 15 women had accused him of intersexual harassment.

The women, galore of whom had served arsenic his instrumentality clerks, said Judge Kozinski had touched them inappropriately, made unwanted intersexual comments and made them ticker intersexual materials connected his computer.

Chief Justice Roberts wrote connected Friday that the national judiciary had taken galore steps to marque its workplaces safe, including revising its procedures to “provide robust mechanisms for reporting and addressing instances of misconduct.”

As is his custom, the main justness began his study with a humanities sketch. This year, it was of William H. Taft, who was appointed to beryllium main justness a period ago, aft having served arsenic president. Chief Justice Taft, a ample man, was an energetic administrator.

“Taft sought to supplant the prevailing civilization of isolation successful which each justice was — successful his words — near to ‘paddle his ain canoe,’” Chief Justice Roberts wrote.

“Once you get past the representation of ‘Big Bill’ paddling a canoe, see that helium knew good however to navigate the halls of Congress,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote, adding, “He threw his sizeable governmental heft into creating the mechanisms of self-governance for national courts crossed the country.”

Although Chief Justice Roberts did not code proposals to summation the size of his tribunal oregon to enforce presumption limits connected its members, helium described with support Chief Justice Taft’s efforts to sphere judicial independence.

“He understood that disapproval of the courts is inevitable,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote, “and helium lived done an epoch erstwhile national courts faced strident calls for reform, immoderate warranted and immoderate not.”

The due response, the existent main justness said Chief Justice Taft erstwhile observed, was “to remove, arsenic acold arsenic possible, grounds for conscionable disapproval of our judicial system.”