Chief Justice Roberts says Constitution remains "firm and unshaken"

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Chief Justice John Roberts said Wednesday that the Constitution remains a sturdy pillar for the country, a connection that comes aft a tumultuous twelvemonth successful the nation's judicial system, with pivotal Supreme Court decisions connected the horizon.

Roberts said the nation's founding documents stay "firm and unshaken," a notation to a century-old quote from then-President Calvin Coolidge. "True then; existent now," Roberts wrote successful his annual year-end letter to the judiciary.

The missive comes aft a twelvemonth successful which ineligible scholars and Democrats raised fears of a imaginable law situation arsenic President Trump and GOP supporters pushed backmost against rulings that slowed his far-reaching blimpish agenda.

Roberts weighed successful astatine 1 constituent earlier this year, issuing a uncommon rebuke aft Mr. Trump called for the impeachment of a justice who had ruled against him successful a lawsuit implicit the deportation of Venezuelan migrants accused of being pack members.

"For much than 2 centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an due effect to disagreement concerning a judicial decision," Roberts said successful a March statement. "The mean appellate reappraisal process exists for that purpose."

Roberts has spoken astir the value of judicial independency before. In his year-end study to adjacent retired 2024, helium highlighted 4 areas that helium said threatened the independency of judges: violence, intimidation, disinformation and threats to defy lawfully entered judgments.

The main justice's Wednesday missive was mostly focused connected the nation's history, including an aboriginal 19th-century lawsuit establishing the rule that Congress shouldn't region judges implicit contentious rulings.

While the Trump medication faced pushback successful the little courts, it has scored a bid of immoderate 2 twelve wins connected the Supreme Court's emergency docket. The court's blimpish bulk has allowed the medication to determination up for present with barring transgender radical from the military, clawing backmost billions of dollars of congressionally approved national spending, moving aggressively connected migration and firing the Senate-confirmed leaders of autarkic national agencies.

The tribunal besides handed Mr. Trump a fewer defeats implicit the past year, including successful his propulsion to deploy the National Guard to U.S. cities.

Other pivotal issues are up for the precocious tribunal successful 2026, including arguments implicit Mr. Trump's push to extremity birthright citizenship and a ruling connected whether helium tin unilaterally enforce tariffs connected hundreds of countries.

Roberts' missive contained fewer references to those issues.

It opened with a past of the seminal 1776 pamphlet "Common Sense," written by Thomas Paine — a "recent migrant to Britain's North American colonies," Roberts noted — and closed with Coolidge's encouragement to "turn for solace" to the Constitution and Declaration of Independence "amid each the welter of partisan politics."