Chief Justice Marshall confronted many challenges, including a clash with President Thomas Jefferson that established the basis for judicial review of congressional action in Marbury v. Madison. Chief Justice Roberts, by contrast, was called on to address unfocused remarks from Mr. Trump lashing out against the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, based in San Francisco. Mr. Trump said courts in the Ninth Circuit always ruled against his policies, and his main point seemed to be that he did not like losing.
“You go to the Ninth Circuit and it’s a disgrace,” he said. “And I’m going to put in a major complaint because you cannot win if you’re us.”
“That’s not law,” Mr. Trump said. “That’s not what this country stands for.”
Renewing his attack on Twitter on Wednesday, Mr. Trump quoted from Chief Justice Roberts’s statement.
“It would be great if the 9th Circuit was indeed an ‘independent judiciary,’” he wrote, “but if it is why are so many opposing view (on Border and Safety) cases filed there, and why are a vast number of those cases overturned. Please study the numbers, they are shocking.”
In a follow-up tweet, he mused about breaking up the Ninth Circuit into two or three circuits, a move that would require legislation.
The Ninth Circuit hears appeals from federal courts in nine western states, including two on the Mexican border, California and Arizona. The circuit has a reputation for being frequently reversed by the Supreme Court, but its reversal rate is only a little higher than average and not as high as that of some other circuits.
Stuart M. Gerson, a former senior Justice Department official in both Republican and Democratic administrations, said Chief Justice Roberts’s statement was part of a clash between two conceptions of the judicial role.
“The chief justice’s comment punctuates the fact that the administration is doing very poorly before judges appointed by Republicans and Democrats,” Mr. Gerson said, “most of whom are acting, not as politicians in robes, but as independent agents of the rule of law.”
