Steve Vladeck tries to be more generous towards the Chief’s Year-End Report than I was. He ultimately cannot do it.
First, Vladeck argues it is “inexcusable” and not accidental that Roberts did not use the Report to even indirectly address the various attacks on the judiciary. Second, he questions who Roberts is (or believes he is) talking to with his subtle calls for judicial independence and the role of immigrants (including Thomas Paine) in the face of Administration attacks and behavior that the Court (with Roberts largely agreeing) has enabled. He believes it is the vanishingly small subset of conservative lawyers who support the Court but oppose the Trump Administration’s actions–a group that includes (and might be limited to) Roberts himself. But “that degree of subtletly is, and will be, lost on everyone else.”