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In his December 31 Year End Report, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts announced<\/a> his New Year\u2019s resolution: to continue gaslighting the country by blaming everyone but himself for the dishonor he has allowed to fester in his Court<\/a>. He did so in the guise of offering a righteous reading of the history of judicial independence in this country.<\/p>\n But a closer look at what Roberts wrote reveals the same tendency to cherry-pick history that characterizes many of his and his ideologically-aligned colleague\u2019s judicial opinions<\/a>. Changing the genre did not change this troubling tendency.<\/p>\n The ode to judicial independence that Roberts offers rings hollow, considering today\u2019s scandal-ridden Court. Moreover, the Judicial Conference\u2019s recent refusal to address the decades of alleged ethical lapses<\/a> by Justice Clarence Thomas provides another reason why the judicial independence that Roberts reveres should not be a free pass to avoid accountability.<\/p>\n A review of the last several Year-End Reports by the Chief Justice reveals an effort to deflect attention from the Court\u2019s own challenges and offer musings more appropriate for a bar journal article than an analysis from the highest judicial officer in the country. As Above the Law\u2019s Joe Patrice notes<\/a>, \u201cFor Chief Justice Roberts, the\u00a0Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary<\/a>\u00a0is no longer a serious assessment of the state of the federal courts as much as it\u2019s a taxpayer-funded blog post for him to express his\u00a0disdain for the American people<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n History is the through-line within the Chief Justice\u2019s once-a-year communication with the nation he serves. And it is the shroud that he uses to gloss over ethical challenges within the court system.<\/p>\n In 2021<\/a>, Roberts\u2019s history lesson recounted the efforts of Chief Justice William Howard Taft to create greater efficiency and collaboration among the nation\u2019s federal judges through the establishment of a Conference of Senior Judges (the predecessor to today\u2019s Judicial Conference of the United States). Roberts described the importance of Taft\u2019s work as creating \u201cthe mechanisms of self-governance for federal courts across the country.\u201d<\/p>\n He also highlighted subsequent congressional measures that \u201cfortified the Judiciary\u2019s institutional independence,\u201d including empowering the \u201cJudicial Conference and the Circuit Judicial Councils to respond to complaints of judicial misconduct.\u201d He further noted that \u201cCongress has continued to exercise oversight of the Judiciary\u2019s operations, promoting a useful dialogue characterized by mutual respect in matters of administration.\u201d<\/p>\n But the Chief managed to make his own words a mockery just two years later when he refused to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee<\/a> that was examining proposals to hold the Supreme Court to the same ethical standards as other federal judges. There too, he hid behind<\/a> the notion of \u201cpreserving judicial independence\u201d\u00a0as his excuse for evading accountability.<\/p>\n His \u201cnothing to see here\u201d approach was also displayed in the part of his 2021 Report where he responded to a Wall Street Journal<\/em> series about 131 federal court judges who failed to disclose their personal financial interest in matters before them<\/a>. After a few dutiful words reinforcing the expectation that judges adhere to the highest standards, Roberts sought to \u201cput these lapses in context\u201d by adding his own interpretation of the violations.<\/p>\n He deemed most infractions \u201cisolated violations\u201d that \u201clikely entailed unintentional oversights\u201d as though he had personal knowledge of their motives. The Chief Justice assured the American public that \u201cfor all the conflicts identified, the Journal did not report that any affected the judge\u2019s consideration of a case or that the judge\u2019s actions in any of those cases\u2026financially benefited the judge.\u201d<\/p>\n These words offer a preview of how he can ignore the repeated allegations of unethical behaviors<\/a> on his own Court.<\/p>\n Turning to 2022, the Chief\u2019s Year-End Report<\/a> recounted shameful efforts by Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus to prevent the integration of the State\u2019s schools after Brown v. Board of Education<\/em> earlier. But it ignored the disgraceful attempts by the states to avoid implementing the Supreme Court\u2019s decision.<\/p>\n Instead, Roberts focused on a single judge, Ronald Davies, who ruled against the governor\u2019s efforts to defy Brown<\/em>. Amidst all the pain surrounding desegregation in Arkansas, Roberts lionized Davies, noting that he \u201cmissed his own son\u2019s wedding to see through his charge to follow the law.\u201d<\/p>\n Roberts highlighted the threats to Judge Davies that followed his decision in the Arkansas case and offered him as an example of the federal judicial officers \u201cwho quietly, diligently, and faithfully discharge their duties every day of the year.\u201d That is the image Roberts frequently conjures to defend the federal judiciary<\/a>, notwithstanding the partisan ideology<\/a> espoused by his SCOTUS colleagues.<\/p>\n In his 2023 Report<\/a>, the Chief Justice\u2019s history lesson addressed technological advances in the court system and the future of AI in the court. He offered the obvious prediction that human judges will not be supplanted by advanced technology.<\/p>\n At the same time, he waxed nostalgic over the Clerk of the Supreme Court\u2019s tradition of setting out white goose quill pens at the counsel table before every oral argument as \u201ctreasured souvenirs\u201d for the lawyers. As other commentators reported<\/a>, Roberts seemed more than a little out of touch with the world outside the Marble Palace.<\/p>\n But this year, he conveniently shifted the register away from quaint court practices and toward external threats that have now made Judge Davies\u2019s experience an everyday occurrence.<\/p>\n He seemed to point fingers almost everywhere, including at public officials who \u201cregrettably have engaged in recent attempts to intimidate judges\u2014for example, suggesting political bias in the judge\u2019s adverse rulings without a credible basis for such allegations.\u201d Yet he gave a pass to the public officials who engaged in dangerous intimidation tactics by allowing them to remain anonymous, and had nary a self-reflective glance at the Justices themselves to see how their behavior threatens the independence and integrity of the Court.<\/p>\n Instead, his reports are like shiny objects that urge the reader to look everywhere except at the Court\u2019s scandalous upending of long-held precedents<\/a> or at the Court\u2019s overuse of the \u201cShadow Docket<\/a>.\u201d Look everywhere except at the Chief Justice\u2019s own role as the author of the shocking and widely condemned decision<\/a> conferring immunity from criminal prosecution on the presidency.<\/p>\n The Chief Justice wants his readers to focus on the dangers that arise from violence, intimidation, disinformation, and threats to defy lawfully entered judgments. Those dangers\u2014both to individuals in the justice system and to the rule of law\u2014always demand our condemnation.<\/p>\n But that condemnation cannot give the Chief Justice a free pass to gaslight the country by ignoring the hypocrisy in his Court\u2019s opinions and avoiding responsibility for his own failure to enforce any ethical standards. The Chief\u2019s pious and partial historical Year-End references to the value of judicial independence only serve to highlight the Court\u2019s habit of culling selective history to reach preordained results.<\/p>\n