Chief Justice John Roberts issued another warning Saturday that heated political rhetoric aimed at judges can spur physical threats and violence.
“If you have somebody who’s expressing a high degree of hostility to the court, on whatever basis … 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,” Roberts said during an appearance at a judicial conference.
He spoke the day after the Supreme Court issued its final opinions of the term, but he did not discuss any of the court’s rulings.
Since President Donald Trump returned to office in January, he has mounted withering attacks on federal judges who have blocked his executive orders and other policies on mass deportation, government funding cuts and ending diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. He has blasted some judges as Communists and even called for their impeachment.
However, speaking to an audience of judges and attorneys, Roberts did not mention Trump by name. And while the chief justice said he’s been prompted to issue public statements against such verbal attacks, he emphasized that he has done so in response to comments from both Republican and Democratic officials.
“I’ve been compelled for the past few years to make statements about people on the one side of the aisle, their views on judges, and on the other side. It’s not politically associated in any way with one side or the other,” the chief justice said, apparently referring to two instances where he inveighed against Trump’s comments and one where he criticized remarks by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
Schumer apologized for his comments. Trump has not and even doubled down.
Threats and violence against judges have increased in recent years. In 2020, an assailant targeting U.S. District Judge Esther Salas of New Jersey killed her 20-year-old son and injured her husband. In 2022, a man attempted to assassinate Justice Brett Kavanaugh. A state judge in Maryland was murdered in his driveway in 2023, and a state judge in Kentucky was killed at his courthouse in 2024.
“I think the political people on both sides of the aisle need to keep that in mind,” Roberts said about the possible progression toward violence. “If you think the law is being not followed, you can address that legislatively. But threatening the judges for doing their job is totally unacceptable.”
Roberts spoke about 24 hours after the high court released its final decisions in cases argued this term, handing wins to the Trump administration on nationwide injunctions, to states seeking to mandate age-verification for porn websites and to religious parents who want to pull their kids out of public school classes that use books with LGBTQ+ themes.
The chief justice sounded relieved to be through the frenzied stretch of work the court typically completes by late June every year. He acknowledged that the harsh language the justices sometimes exchange in the most contentious cases leads to perceptions of a bitterly divided court.
“Particularly at the end of the term, we are offering opinions — decisions — where there is a lot of sharp division and some sharp adjectives employed,” Roberts said. Despite the sometimes rancorous words used, he insisted that the justices “to a person [are] working hard to understand” their colleagues’ thinking on the cases and whether there’s an opportunity to achieve consensus.
Roberts did say the pile-up of cases can be difficult to manage, and he suggested this year was worse than some others. He didn’t say why, but the court heard the nationwide injunctions dispute on an emergency basis at the request of the Trump administration and held arguments May 15, about two weeks after arguments typically conclude for the term.
“We’re all lawyers, and like lawyers you put things off ’til the last minute,” the chief justice said. “There’s nine of us. … People have their own idea of the schedule. It’s part of my responsibility to make sure we’re on the same page to the extent we can, so we don’t have all 70 cases decided on the last day. And that’s not easy.”
“Things were a little crunched towards the end this year. We’ll try to space it out a little better next year,” Roberts added.
Roberts described his job primarily as managing people and added the typical chief justices’ lament that the position actually has little explicit power over the court’s eight other members. He waffled a bit, however, on whether his colleagues uniformly defer to him on management issues.
“You can’t fire people. You can’t cut their pay,” Roberts observed. “My colleagues have uniformly been gracious, I would say, over the last 20 years, in giving me the benefit of the doubt and understanding, ‘Well, that might not be what I would do, but somebody’s got to decide that for all of us. And you know, he’s doing the best he can.’ … I am very grateful for the fact that my colleagues generally recognize that, sort of, somebody has to do it.”
Roberts spent about 45 minutes taking questions from Chief Judge Albert Diaz Jr. of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. It’s one of three federal appeals courts Roberts has special responsibility for, with all emergency Supreme Court appeals from those circuits routed to him.
During the exchange with Roberts, there was a brief mention of the importance of judicial independence, but no explicit discussion of claims that the Trump administration has defied some court rulings it disagreed with. The administration has denied defying those orders, even as it mounted withering attacks on the judges who issued them.
As the discussion concluded, Diaz remarked: “It’s obviously a very challenging time for us as Americans.” He did not elaborate.