John G. Roberts Jr., in his year-end report on the federal judiciary, didn’t call out JD Vance by name. But the chief justice took an unmistakable — and well-deserved — swipe at the vice president-elect over his reckless suggestions that it is sometimes acceptable to defy the rulings of federal courts.
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Roberts has multiple concerns when it comes to defending the imperative of an independent judiciary: violence or threats of violence directed against judges; efforts to intimidate them, fueled by the rise of social media; and disinformation, including by foreign actors. But on the eve of the inauguration of Vance and Donald Trump, Roberts’s most compelling warning involved the prospect of government officials defying court orders.
Judicial independence, he wrote, “is undermined unless the other branches [of government] are firm in their responsibility to enforce the court’s decrees.” He cited, of course, the response to the court’s 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, when governors throughout the South sought to defy court orders to desegregate public schools.
“The courage of federal judges to uphold the law in the face of massive local opposition — and the willingness of the Eisenhower and Kennedy Administrations to stand behind those judges — are strong testaments to the relationship between judicial independence and the rule of law in our Nation’s history,” Roberts observed.
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And in case you missed the pointed reference to the role of both Republican and Democratic administrations in enforcing court orders, Roberts went on, and he’s worth quoting in full.
“Every Administration suffers defeats in the court system — sometimes in cases with major ramifications for executive or legislative power or other consequential topics,” Roberts wrote. “Nevertheless, for the past several decades, the decisions of the courts, popular or not, have been followed, and the Nation has avoided the standoffs that plagued the 1950s and 1960s. Within the past few years, however, elected officials from across the political spectrum have raised the specter of open disregard for federal court rulings. These dangerous suggestions, however sporadic, must be soundly rejected.”
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These words cannot be read in a vacuum — nor, I suspect, were they written in one. Because of all the “elected officials from across the political spectrum” who have toyed with defying court orders, the most prominent by far — and the one who ought to know better — is JD Vance, Yale Law School Class of 2013, whose wife, Usha, clerked for Roberts from 2017 to 2018.
And yet defying the courts is something Vance has repeatedly suggested. “If I was giving him [Trump] one piece of advice, fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state,” Vance said on a 2021 podcast. “Replace them with our people. And when the courts — because you will get taken to court — and when the courts stop you, stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did and say: ‘The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.’”
This was no casual, one-off comment.
Vance reiterated his position — although he tried to soft-pedal it — in a February interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos:
Vance: “The president has to be able to run the government as he thinks he should. That’s the way the Constitution works. It has been thwarted too much by the way our bureaucracy has worked over the past 15 years.”
Stephanopoulos: “The Constitution also says the president must abide by legitimate Supreme Court rulings, doesn’t it?”
Vance: “The Constitution says that the Supreme Court can make rulings, but if the Supreme Court — and, look, I hope that they would not do this, but if the Supreme Court said the president of the United States can’t fire a general, that would be an illegitimate ruling, and the president has to have Article II prerogative under the Constitution to actually run the military as he sees fit.”
Then, in an interview with Politico Magazine the following month, Vance made clear that he meant defiance of the federal courts, and not just in the narrow case of the president’s authority over the military.
“If the elected president says, ‘I get to control the staff of my own government,’ and the Supreme Court steps in and says, ‘You’re not allowed to do that’ — like, that is the constitutional crisis,” Vance said. “It’s not whatever Trump or whoever else does in response. When the Supreme Court tells the president he can’t control the government anymore, we need to be honest about what’s actually going on.”
So, here we are. Trump and Vance are about to be sworn in. The prospect of a standoff between the Trump administration and the courts is not theoretical — it is real. Trump’s contempt for the courts and the rule of law has long been evident. Now, he will have Vance by his side, seemingly ready to egg him on.
When the Trump administration loses an important case before the Supreme Court — and its first-term record implies that is likely — will Vance counsel defiance and what Roberts called “open disregard”?
That would be, as Roberts warned, a dangerous suggestion. Usha Vance should urge her husband to mind the Constitution and the chief justice. Meanwhile, the rest of us need to brace for what Roberts might have to report a year from now.
Make sense of the latest news and debates with our daily newsletter
Roberts has multiple concerns when it comes to defending the imperative of an independent judiciary: violence or threats of violence directed against judges; efforts to intimidate them, fueled by the rise of social media; and disinformation, including by foreign actors. But on the eve of the inauguration of Vance and Donald Trump, Roberts’s most compelling warning involved the prospect of government officials defying court orders.
Judicial independence, he wrote, “is undermined unless the other branches [of government] are firm in their responsibility to enforce the court’s decrees.” He cited, of course, the response to the court’s 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, when governors throughout the South sought to defy court orders to desegregate public schools.
“The courage of federal judges to uphold the law in the face of massive local opposition — and the willingness of the Eisenhower and Kennedy Administrations to stand behind those judges — are strong testaments to the relationship between judicial independence and the rule of law in our Nation’s history,” Roberts observed.
Follow Ruth Marcus
And in case you missed the pointed reference to the role of both Republican and Democratic administrations in enforcing court orders, Roberts went on, and he’s worth quoting in full.
“Every Administration suffers defeats in the court system — sometimes in cases with major ramifications for executive or legislative power or other consequential topics,” Roberts wrote. “Nevertheless, for the past several decades, the decisions of the courts, popular or not, have been followed, and the Nation has avoided the standoffs that plagued the 1950s and 1960s. Within the past few years, however, elected officials from across the political spectrum have raised the specter of open disregard for federal court rulings. These dangerous suggestions, however sporadic, must be soundly rejected.”
Advertisement
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...=mc_magnet-opmarcuscourt_inline_collection_19
These words cannot be read in a vacuum — nor, I suspect, were they written in one. Because of all the “elected officials from across the political spectrum” who have toyed with defying court orders, the most prominent by far — and the one who ought to know better — is JD Vance, Yale Law School Class of 2013, whose wife, Usha, clerked for Roberts from 2017 to 2018.
And yet defying the courts is something Vance has repeatedly suggested. “If I was giving him [Trump] one piece of advice, fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state,” Vance said on a 2021 podcast. “Replace them with our people. And when the courts — because you will get taken to court — and when the courts stop you, stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did and say: ‘The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.’”
This was no casual, one-off comment.
Vance reiterated his position — although he tried to soft-pedal it — in a February interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos:
Vance: “The president has to be able to run the government as he thinks he should. That’s the way the Constitution works. It has been thwarted too much by the way our bureaucracy has worked over the past 15 years.”
Stephanopoulos: “The Constitution also says the president must abide by legitimate Supreme Court rulings, doesn’t it?”
Vance: “The Constitution says that the Supreme Court can make rulings, but if the Supreme Court — and, look, I hope that they would not do this, but if the Supreme Court said the president of the United States can’t fire a general, that would be an illegitimate ruling, and the president has to have Article II prerogative under the Constitution to actually run the military as he sees fit.”
Then, in an interview with Politico Magazine the following month, Vance made clear that he meant defiance of the federal courts, and not just in the narrow case of the president’s authority over the military.
“If the elected president says, ‘I get to control the staff of my own government,’ and the Supreme Court steps in and says, ‘You’re not allowed to do that’ — like, that is the constitutional crisis,” Vance said. “It’s not whatever Trump or whoever else does in response. When the Supreme Court tells the president he can’t control the government anymore, we need to be honest about what’s actually going on.”
So, here we are. Trump and Vance are about to be sworn in. The prospect of a standoff between the Trump administration and the courts is not theoretical — it is real. Trump’s contempt for the courts and the rule of law has long been evident. Now, he will have Vance by his side, seemingly ready to egg him on.
When the Trump administration loses an important case before the Supreme Court — and its first-term record implies that is likely — will Vance counsel defiance and what Roberts called “open disregard”?
That would be, as Roberts warned, a dangerous suggestion. Usha Vance should urge her husband to mind the Constitution and the chief justice. Meanwhile, the rest of us need to brace for what Roberts might have to report a year from now.
