Supreme Court Justice John Roberts has been left "shaken" by the unexpected public reaction to his ruling in the Donald Trump presidential immunity case, a columnist wrote Friday.
Slate's judicial writer Dahlia Lithwick wrote that Roberts was left shocked that Americans didn't buy his attempt to persuade them that his ruling was not about Trump, but instead focused on the office of the presidency. The court ruled that a president was largely immune from criminal prosecution for official actions.
Lithwick referenced a report by CNN's Joan Biskupic. He “was shaken by the adverse public reaction to his decision affording [Donald] Trump substantial immunity from criminal prosecution," she wrote.
"His protestations that the case concerned the presidency, not Trump, held little currency.”
Lithwick also mentioned New York Times reporters Jodi Kantor and Adam Liptak's claim that Roberts had hoped his pro-Trump ruling would be written with such poetry that it would lower the bubbling anger from an anti-Trump public still furious over the elimination of Roe v. Wade.
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Roberts "seemed confident that his arguments would soar above politics, persuade the public, and stand the test of time," the Times reported.
But that failed so remarkably that, “Unlike most of the justices, he made no public speeches over the summer," Lithwick wrote.
"Colleagues and friends who saw him said he looked especially weary, as if carrying greater weight on his shoulders.”
Lithwick pointed to legal reporter Linda Greenhouse, who asked on Slate's podcast how Roberts could "have been so clueless about where this opinion was going to leave a court that has already been really battered in public opinion ever since the run-up to Dobbs? … What this says to me is that he and other members of his majority live in a kind of bubble.”
