On the day after the Supreme Court issued a decision that sharply curtailed the power of federal judges to block Trump administration policies, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. spoke before a hotel ballroom filled with them.
He didn’t say a word about it.
The chief justice on Saturday gave a public interview with Judge Albert Diaz, the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, at a judicial conference in Charlotte attended by lower court judges who will be expected to parse and follow the Supreme Court’s directive limiting their ability to block executive branch policies nationwide.
During the discussion, the chief justice hinted at the stress of the end of the court’s term, which concluded on Friday, a time that he described as “a lot of sharp division and some sharp adjectives.”
During its last session of the term, the justices released six major opinions, including one that found lower court judges had most likely exceeded their authority by repeatedly issuing nationwide injunctions, powerful judicial tools that block an executive action not just for the parties in a case but for the whole country.
Legal experts say the ruling will create complex new questions for lower court judges, as they sort out how to deal with executive actions they believe they may violate the law.
But the chief justice was not asked for — and did not volunteer — any guidance or thoughts on the role of the federal judges who have been flooded with legal challenges to Trump administration policies. He did urge political leaders to limit heated rhetoric about judges.
The chief justice called threats against judges “totally unacceptable.” He said he viewed it as dangerous when “it becomes wrapped up in the political dispute that a judge who’s doing his or her job is part of the problem.”
“The danger, of course, is somebody might pick up on that, and we have had, of course, serious threats of violence and murder of judges just simply for doing their work,” Chief Justice Roberts said. “The political people on both sides of the aisle need to keep that in mind.”
Chief Justice Roberts has decried threats to the judiciary before, including in a somber year-end report in December, when he condemned “violence, intimidation and defiance directed at judges.”
The chief justice did not single out or mention President Trump at all, though threats against federal judges have risen drastically since Mr. Trump took office, according to internal data compiled by the U.S. Marshals Service. The threats have included a pipe bomb hoax against a sister of Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
Many federal judges have spoken out about their concerns that heated rhetoric against judges who are overseeing high-profile cases challenging Trump administration policies could lead to political violence.
On Thursday, retired Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy warned in an online forum about threats to the rule of law that such threats to judges could undermine the standing of democracy in United States in the eyes of the world, saying that “democracy is at risk.”
The summer is a time when the justices traditionally spend more time traveling the country and delivering public remarks. But given the constant emergency applications to the court on Trump administration policies, the work of the court this year is unlikely to pause for the warmer months, though the chief justice said he was eager to get away from the relentless pace of the term’s end.
Joking about scrambled travel plans to get to the conference, he said, “Nothing is going to keep me in Washington.”
Abbie VanSickle covers the United States Supreme Court for The Times. She is a lawyer and has an extensive background in investigative reporting.
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