Ahead of a planned conversation with Robert Stein at @UofMNLawSchool today, Chief Justice Roberts delivered prepared remarks on recent events in Washington, reassuring the audience of the Supreme Court's independence and nonpartisanship.
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Roberts: "I will not criticize the political branches. We do that often enough in our opinions." But what I would like to do briefly is to emphasize how the judicial branch "is and must be different."
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Roberts: I have "great respect" for our elected officials. We do not speak for the people. but "we speak for the constitution." That job obviously requires independence from the political branches.
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Roberts: "The story of [SCOTUS] would be very different without that sort of independence." Without independence, no Brown v. Board of Edu, no West Virginia v. Barnette, and no steel seizure case, where SCOTUS held that Pres Truman was subject to the Constitution even in wartime.
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Roberts: "Now, the Court has from time to time erred, and erred greatly. But when it has, it has been because the court yielded to political pressure, as in the Korematsu case, shamefully upholding the internment during World War II of Japanese American citizens."
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Roberts: "Those of us on the court know the best way to do our job is to work together in a collegial way. I am not walking about mere civility, although that helps."
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Roberts: "I am instead talking about a shared commitment to a genuine exchange of ideas and views through each step of the decision process. We need to know in each step that we are in this together."
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Roberts: "There is a concrete expression of that collegiality in a tradition at [SCOTUS] that has prevailed for over a century. Before we go on the bench to hear an argument in a case, and before we go into the conference room... we pause for a moment and shake each other's hand"
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And here Roberts quotes Kavanaugh: "It's a small thing, perhaps, but it is a repeated reminder that, as our newest colleague put it, we do not sit on opposite sides of an aisle. We do not caucus in separate rooms. We do not serve one party or one interest. We serve one nation."
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