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Chief Justice Praises Judicial Independence

October 3, 2006 — Chief Justice John Roberts praised in a recent speech "the importance and rarity of the judicial independence we have in our country," and warned against continuing attacks against it.

"The long history of attack on judicial independence confirms that neither side in the political debate has a monopoly on the tactic," he said in a September 28 speech to "Fair and Independent Courts: A Conference on the State of the Judiciary." The conference was sponsored by the Georgetown University Law Center and the American Law Institute.

Roberts quoted the late President Ronald Reagan in stating that the judiciary's "commitment to the preservation of our rights often requires the lonely courage of a patriot."

"Those words have stuck with me since I heard them," Roberts said. "And to the extent that attacks on judicial independence emanate from conservative quarters, I would commend to those quarters those words from the leading conservative voice of our times . . . President Reagan recognized that it was the job of judges to make unpopular decisions . . . But he also recognized that the courage required of them was the courage of a patriot because in making those unpopular decisions, they were fulfilling the framers' vision of a society governed by the rule of law.'

The chief justice said judicial independence does not mean that judges are immune from criticism. But criticism "should not degenerate into attack on individual judges for a decision as a means of intimidation, and it should not take the form of institutional retribution, action against the judiciary as a whole, that might inhibit the judges from performing their vital function," he said.

Roberts said all judges must recognize that judicial independence is not an end in itself. "Judges are insulated from political pressure because they're not supposed to be making political decisions, but deciding cases according to the rule of law," he said. "Judicial self-restraint . . . is the necessary correlative of judicial independence."