In Pennsylvania earlier this month, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. insisted the public is misguided to think of Supreme Court justices as political actors.
In Florida last week, Justice Clarence Thomas, who has served since 1991, waxed poetic about his deep friendships with justices from an earlier era, saying there is nothing “negative” about his relations with the newer crop of colleagues while acknowledging the court is now “different.”
And in Washington on Monday night, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson criticized the court for disrupting its normal practices through quick-turn, often unexplained emergency orders and warned that the public loses confidence in the court when its decisions appear political.
As the justices have traveled the country this month for public appearances, a traditional part of the court’s schedule after finishing oral arguments for the term, they have seemed intensely aware of a public debate about their relationships with each other and the court’s own legitimacy.
“It is so important for the public to perceive us as neutral, nonpartisan,” because “public confidence is really all the judiciary has. That’s our currency,” Justice Jackson said during a wide-ranging conversation with a federal judge from South Carolina at the American Law Institute’s annual meeting in Washington.
“It’s incumbent upon us to do things, to act in ways that shore up public confidence.”
Justice Jackson’s comments hint at what appear to be frayed relations among some of the justices as the court prepares to issue its final rulings, many in deeply consequential cases, before the term ends in late June or early July.
The tensions come as the court is being pummeled with criticism from across the political spectrum. President Trump is still fuming on social media over the court’s decision to invalidate his sweeping tariffs and musing about the likelihood of a major ruling against his effort to end the guarantee of birthright citizenship.
The president has called out two of his own nominees, Justices Neil M. Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, for voting against his tariffs, saying they should have been “loyal to the person that appointed them.”
From the left, civil rights organizations and Democrats have decried the court’s significant weakening of the landmark Voting Rights Act last month. The decision has set off Republican-led redistricting efforts to break up majority-Black districts across the South and prompted sharp exchanges between some of the justices.
Soon after the ruling, Chief Justice Roberts defended the court during a judicial conference in Hershey, Pa., and pushed back on what he said was a misunderstanding about its role.
“At a very basic level, people think we’re making policy decisions,” Chief Justice Roberts said. “I think they view us as purely political actors, which I don’t think is an accurate understanding of what we do.”
Justice Barrett made a similar point during a book talk at the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas.
“I think the casual reader about the Supreme Court or its decisions might have the impression we’re just kind of up there, politicians in robes. That’s not how the court functions, and I think if you listen to some oral arguments, you see what the court’s about,” she said.
The decision in the Louisiana matter was 6 to 3 and divided along ideological lines, as is frequently the case in the most controversial rulings.
In response, Justice Elena Kagan stoically read parts of her lengthy dissent aloud from the bench, a rare moment for the liberal justice known for seeking compromise, signaling her strong disagreement.
The decision, she said, provided the “latest chapter in the majority’s now-completed demolition of the Voting Rights Act.” Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Jackson signed on to the dissent.
A follow-up ruling expediting the Louisiana decision in a way that allowed Republicans in the state to quickly redraw its maps ahead of the midterms, led to sharp accusations from Justice Jackson that the majority was playing politics.
“The court unshackles itself from both constraints today and dives into the fray. And just like that, those principles give way to power,” Justice Jackson wrote then, on behalf of only herself.
That prompted a strong response from Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., who called Justice Jackson’s assertions “a groundless and utterly irresponsible charge.” He was joined by Justices Thomas and Gorsuch.
It has been Justice Jackson who has been most willing to criticize the court, increasingly alone. On Monday, she offered anew a sharp critique of her conservative colleagues’ handling of a series of brief emergency orders that have allowed many of the Trump administration’s policies to take effect on a temporary basis.
There are “real world consequences that are occurring, and no one really has a clear sense of why it’s happening or what the court’s reasoning is. So I just think we can and should be better,” she told Judge Richard Gergel of the U.S. District Court in South Carolina.
Even when the justices are ideologically divided and exchange sharp words in their written opinions, they like to highlight in public appearances their ability to get along despite substantive disagreements.
Justice Sotomayor, a Democratic nominee, and Justice Barrett, a Republican nominees, headlined a series of joint appearances two years ago to make the point. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a liberal, and Justice Antonin Scalia, a conservative, had a storied odd-couple friendship.
In interviews for his new children’s book, “Heroes of 1776,” Justice Gorsuch has insisted his colleagues get along, emphasizing the court’s record of issuing unanimous opinions in about 40 percent of its cases despite the justices’ differing judicial philosophies.
“We’re able to talk to one another and listen to one another, and find common ground a surprising amount of the time,” he told David French, an opinion columnist for The New York Times. “I think that’s a miracle.”
In a separate interview on Fox News, Justice Gorsuch said he and his colleagues “have a good time together disagreeing.”
But at times, some of the justices have appeared to acknowledge that they are not particularly close.
During his appearance in Florida last week, Justice Thomas reminisced, as he often does in public remarks, about how much closer the justices were in his early years on the bench.
“The friendships and the bonds were much, much deeper than I’m able to form now,” he said during the interview at a golf resort north of Miami with Kasdin Mitchell, an attorney who was once his law clerk.
The difference may be in part generational, Justice Thomas explained. All four of the most recent nominees — Justices Jackson, Barrett, Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh — were young law clerks at the Supreme Court when Justice Thomas was already on the bench.
“The relationships are different,” he said. But, he added, “they aren’t negative in any way.”
Matt Schwartz in Hershey, Pa., and Jesus Jiménez in Dallas contributed to this report.
Ann E. Marimow covers the Supreme Court for The Times from Washington.
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