Summary
Chief Justice John Roberts’ 2024 year-end report warns about threats to judicial independence, citing violence, intimidation, disinformation, and defiance of court rulings.
Roberts raises valid concerns about rising violence against judges and disregard for rulings.
However, he controversially conflates criticism of the judiciary with intimidation and disinformation, including public critique of ethical lapses by justices like Clarence Thomas.
This approach risks diminishing the seriousness of genuine threats and undermining public trust in the court.
No, it’s just one more step towards authoritarianism.
Right now, the idea is to equate criticism of authority with intimidation. And that is pretty easy to do when the people like what authority is saying. And right now, there are plenty of people who love where all of this is going and will gladly support this movement because they think they’ll always agree with authority forever and ever and ever amen.
Once you get people to equate criticism with intimidation, it’s a much easier leap to extend that to threats, since intimidation is typically either an explicit or implied threat: Come around to my way of thinking or bad things might happen to you. Once you do that, you’ve established a chain where criticism of authority can now be seen as a form of intimidation and therefore an implied threat of violence.
At this point, it becomes again easier to normalize arresting these people under some guise of protecting society or somesuch. Some people who have grievances against the government and make threats of violence may decide to escalate and commit a mass shooting or a bombing as a form of political radicalization. And of course, the best way to prevent a tragedy like that is to investigate potential threats once you start seeing red flags. Like that guy that showed up at the town hall and asked the mayor about why he was seen handing a large sack of cash to the chief of police in a back alley. He also voted against the mayor in the last election so he clearly has an agenda against this guy and the mayor says we need to investigate before he bombs city hall…
Get the idea?
All Roberts is doing is just turning the temperature in the water by just one degree.