WASHINGTON, D.C. March 13, 2020 – On Friday, Demand Justice Executive Director Brian Fallon released the following statement in response to news that a former Hawaii judge has joined a federal district court judge and Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor in criticizing the Roberts Court’s recent actions:
The Roberts Court is facing a crisis of legitimacy. Three judges speaking up in as many weeks shows Roberts is facing revolt from judges who care too much about the courts as an institution to sit silent while he turns it into a junior partner to Trump’s Republican Party.
With so many critical issues to be decided in coming weeks, Roberts should be on notice that he will cause even more irreparable damage to the Court’s reputation if he continues to put partisanship above the law.
Former Hawaii state Judge James Dannenberg has resigned from the Supreme Court Bar in protest of the Court’s shift under Chief Justice John Roberts from impartiality to blatant hyperpartisanship. In his letter of resignation to Roberts, he wrote, “I believe that the Court majority, under your leadership, has become little more than a result-oriented extension of the right wing of the Republican Party.
Just two days ago, U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman published a paper entitled “The Roberts Court’s Assault on Democracy” in the forthcoming issue of the Harvard Law & Policy Review blowing the whistle on the Roberts Court’s partisan, anti-democratic bias. “The Court’s hard right majority is actively participating in undermining American democracy,” he wrote. “Indeed, the Roberts Court has contributed to insuring that the political system in the United States pays little attention to ordinary Americans and responds only to the wishes of a relatively small number of powerful corporations and individuals.
Both of these judges followed Justice Sotomayor in sounding the alarm on the five Republican justices’ allegiances to the Trump administration. Issuing a scathing dissent to a 5-4 decision permitting the Trump administration to institute a wealth test for immigrants, she wrote, “perhaps most troublingly, the Court’s recent behavior on stay applications has benefited one litigant over all others.