STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts issued his annual report on the judiciary. And this 15-page text, which we can read for ourselves online, spends a lot of time expressing concern. Roberts spends several pages discussing threats to the judiciary, including violence against the courts and a lot of more subtle things, insidious things. Sarah Isgur has been reading. She is a senior editor with The Dispatch and a former Justice Department spokesperson in the first Trump administration. Sarah, welcome back.
SARAH ISGUR: Thanks for having me.
INSKEEP: This is an annual occasion, but is it normal for a chief justice to write so extensively about so many concerns?
ISGUR: Yes and no. In fact, the chief justice in this case hearkens back to an earlier report by Chief Justice Rehnquist talking about similar concerns - about the legitimacy and credibility of the judiciary throughout his 20-year tenure as chief justice. And, of course, it's worth remembering John Roberts is only our 17th chief justice. We've had 45 presidents. These guys stay in office a long time.
INSKEEP: Yeah.
ISGUR: They see a lot. And so part of this year-end report that's so fascinating for us court-watchers is to think about what John Roberts thinks is relevant about the court here, 20 years into his own tenure.
INSKEEP: And he gives a list of concerns. He's worried about violence against judges. He's worried about intimidation, which is, I guess, the threat of violence or threat of some other consequences for ruling against a president or whatever. He talks about disinformation. What makes that a serious concern for the Supreme Court in the 21st century?
ISGUR: So much of this 15-page report - well, a lot of it's, frankly, history and great quotes from Alexander Hamilton. But...
INSKEEP: OK.
ISGUR: And, of course, John Marshall. I mean, any chief justice has to cite the longest-serving chief justice...
INSKEEP: Sure.
ISGUR: ...John Marshall. But, you know, there's a lot of vague comments in here when it gets to the actual meat of it. So when he talks about disinformation, he says it's a problem magnified by social media, which provides a ready channel to instantly spread rumor and false information. He also talks about hackers stealing information, often confidential and highly sensitive, for nefarious purposes. This is fascinating for a couple of reasons. One, we have not been told what hacked information came from a hack from 2020 in the federal judicial system.
INSKEEP: Ah.
ISGUR: We don't know of any hack to the Supreme Court except for a YouTube hack. Relatively minor people put up, you know, an ad for cryptocurrency.
So is there some other hack that we don't know of yet? And second, the Supreme Court is hearing expedited arguments about TikTok, a major social media platform run by a foreign adversary, on January 10. And so to release these concerns ahead of that, obviously, it's hard to read that except in the context of the TikTok argument.
INSKEEP: Also, I get the sense that Roberts thinks his court is losing the information war. They issue a ruling on presidential immunity, for example. It is immediately taken by the court's critics as a get-out-of-jail-free card for Donald Trump. Clearly, a lot of the justices didn't think or didn't believe that's what they were doing, but they seem to have lost the argument in many quarters. And this bothers him, it seems.
ISGUR: I think so as well. I do think there are things that they can sort of modernize about the court's communication system. They really pride themselves on not playing the game, right? They don't want a political, you know, PR-slick machine. But at the same time, they release their opinions - just, like, put them on the website for the world. So the Supreme Court reporters - the people who are most empowered to really know what these decisions say - get no heads-up. They don't have more time with the decisions. So I think something they could do is allow people to read the decisions first before just putting them on the website for everyone. But clearly, it's a frustration that I know a lot of the justices feel.
INSKEEP: Why do you think Roberts writes extensively about his concern that people might just start ignoring the Supreme Court?
ISGUR: Because we have seen political actors across the political spectrum just start saying it. You know, oh, well, if the Supreme Court decides that, maybe we just won't follow it. Maybe we'll ignore them. And there's certainly been some thoughts that the Biden administration has even, you know, dipped their toes in this water when it comes to the student loan decision that the Supreme Court issued. They haven't outright defied it, but they've come awfully close.
And there's concerns that the Trump administration will see that and run with it. And if the Supreme Court decides something against Donald Trump - and remember, Donald Trump was the least successful presidential administration at the U.S. Supreme Court for 70-plus years, since FDR. And so if he loses another major case, will Donald Trump just say, you know, hearkening back to the maybe apocryphal quote from President Andrew Jackson, John Roberts made his decision - let's see him enforce it.
INSKEEP: Yeah, and we should note Trump largely followed court rulings that he lost last time but also has a tendency of just saying for himself what he thinks is legal or not. One final thing - Roberts ended by saying the court itself has to be credible in its decisions. In a sentence or two, do you feel they mostly have been?
ISGUR: Obviously, this is responding to the ethics complaints that they've had for various Supreme Court justices, almost all of them at this point. And I think the justices feel that acutely and want the public to have that confidence in the legitimacy of the Supreme Court.
INSKEEP: Sarah Isgur is a senior editor with The Dispatch. We could talk a lot longer, but thanks so much for getting the discussion started - really appreciate it.
ISGUR: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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