Law & Crime report
U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts offered a history lesson advising respect for the independence of the judiciary in his 2024 year end report released on Tuesday.
The sayonara to last year comes at a key time in the nation’s history: President-elect Donald Trump is set to be inaugurated as the 47th president in less than three weeks.
And, while the report does not mention the once and future president by name, much of the advice is directed at the executive branch.
The report opens with a tidy story about one famous incident in which an executive failed to respect the judiciary in the Americas:
In December 1761, a little more than one year into what would be a fifty-nine year reign, King George III decreed that from that date forward, colonial judges were to serve “at the pleasure of the Crown.” This royal edict departed from the long-standing practice in England, enshrined by Parliament in the 1701 Act of Settlement, of allowing judges to retain their offices “during good behavior.”
The King’s order was not well received. To the colonists, stripping lifetime appointments from judicial officers marked yet another instance in which British subjects living on the west side of the Atlantic Ocean were treated as second class…
The history lesson continues on for a bit as the chief justice explores other areas in which the former British monarch defied or disrespected judges – incidents which led to complaints leveled by “Boston lawyer” John Adams informally, and later, formally, by Thomas Jefferson, in the Declaration of Independence.
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