Trump Versus the Judiciary
The rare rebuke that John Roberts made in November is evidence that he fears for the viability of our political system.
Editor’s Note: This article is one of 50 in a series about Trump's first two years as president.
There is a notion of the U.S. judiciary as apolitical, as composed of—in the formulation of the current Supreme Court chief justice—impartial umpires calling balls and strikes. This is a useful, even necessary, fiction that previous presidents have seen fit to promote, even when they weren’t happy about it, in the service of preserving an independent judiciary and a functioning system of constitutional checks and balances.
