In an ominous essay for The New York Times, longtime legal writer Linda Greenhouse argued that Chief Justice John Roberts should enhance public trust in the Supreme Court by embracing “spontaneity” because “deciding cases may not be enough these days.”
“The current chief justice maintains exquisite control of his public persona, to the extent that it is hard to think of a spontaneous John Roberts act,” Greenhouse, a former reporter and columnist at the Times, wrote. “But some spontaneity is called for now.”
Greenhouse faulted Roberts for his refusal to compromise judicial independence by participating in a private one-sided meeting with Senate Democrats. She also cites his perceived failure to force Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas to recuse themselves from Donald Trump’s immunity case due to their spouses’ privately held beliefs.
Greenhouse never explicitly defined “spontaneity,” but she suggested it would include a shift from merely deciding cases to embracing judicial activism.
“Deciding cases is indeed the court’s job,” Greenhouse wrote. “But deciding cases may not be enough these days, when the Supreme Court has plummeted in public esteem to near-historic lows … and every week seems to bring a new challenge to its image of probity and detachment.”
Greenhouse elaborated on the progressive judicial philosophy she argues Roberts should embrace in a separate article for the History News Network.
“We need a Supreme Court that envisions the Constitution as Ruth Bader Ginsburg envisioned it, as an engine of social progress instead of as a roadblock to structural reform,” Greenhouse wrote. She goes
