John Roberts’ New Year Blame Game

Amicus With Dahlia Lithwick | Law, justice, and the courts

Happy (?) New Year. Amicus is gingerly stepping into 2025 and into the coming onslaught of Trump 2.0 with one of the country’s very best legal, constitutional and human guides –– civil rights litigator and 14th Amendment scholar Sherrilyn Ifill. Together, Sherrilyn and Dahlia navigate some of the most pressing questions facing the law, the legal profession, and those who care about it. In his end of year judicial report, Chief Justice John Roberts chose to claim the mantle of both embattled civil rights champions and also infallible monarchs while blaming pretty much everyone except the court for the high court’s plummeting legitimacy. What does it mean when the most powerful men in the world equate all criticism with threats of violence, and confuse victory with victimhood? What does it mean when Supreme Court justices decide to freelance and freestyle as trial court judges and appellate litigators at high court oral arguments? And what do lawyers and judges need to do to hold the line in the coming year, and the years that will follow?

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