Legal scholar Lisa Graves on why this Supreme Court chief justice is the worst in history

[marmar]

John Roberts betrayed America for Donald Trump
Legal scholar Lisa Graves on why this Supreme Court chief justice is the worst in history

By Chauncey DeVega
Senior Writer
Published October 31, 2025 6:30AM (EDT)


(Salon) President Donald Trump sits at the epicenter of negative forces, corrupting nearly everything he and his administration have touched. As numerous experts have warned, his behavior has trickled down throughout society in what is known as the leader-follower effect. Because MAGA is an authoritarian populist movement and a type of personality cult, these dynamics are greatly magnified.

Yet Trump and Trumpism require followers, enablers and other powerful allies to do their work, and one of the most significant is Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.

In her new book “Without Precedent: How Chief Justice Roberts and His Accomplices Rewrote the Constitution and Dismantled Our Rights,” legal scholar Lisa Graves argues that Roberts has consistently betrayed American democracy, the common good and the institution of the court itself to reshape the rule of law in service to Trump’s authoritarian agenda and the radical right.

....(snip)....

Conventional wisdom has long been that the members of the Supreme Court, and specifically, the chief justice, are caretakers who are concerned about the legacy of the institution and respecting precedent. That is clearly no longer true with the right-wing MAGA-controlled Supreme Court.

John Roberts has tried to present himself as an “institutionalist.” But when you look at his record as a whole, you see how he has used the court as a political arm to advance an agenda he’s held for decades as a Reagan revolutionary who has supported Republican administrations and assailed civil rights laws.

....(snip)....

(He) has put his fist on the scales of justice for Donald Trump in numerous ways, while allowing the court to invent fake doctrines to thwart Democratic presidents. The Roberts court has decreed that Trump can continue his illegal, authoritarian actions and has signaled that he has the votes to bend the law, rewrite the Constitution and statutes, and overturn legal precedents to aid him and the agenda to regress the law. .......................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/10/31/john-roberts-betrayed-america-for-donald-trump/

[cachukis]

1. Concurring opinion here. But as much as I try

I cannot find the connection to trump's thank you handshake at a SOTU address.
Why is Roberts destroying the Constitution? He is legacy minded and not stupid.

[mikeysnot]

2. The victors get to rewrite history

[unblock]

4. Terrorists are legacy-minded. School shooters are legacy-minded

Legacy-minded doesn't mean that the legacy you want to leave behind is good by lofty liberal standards.

He's an authoritarian, and I'm sure he's quite proud of the work he's done to help destroy our democracy, limit individual feeedoms, and strengthen the hand of tyranny because for whatever reasons, he thinks that's good and noble and praiseworthy.

[dalton99a]

3. We have a chief justice who is a full-blown traitor to the Constitution.

[Grins]

5. Roberts was put on court to do one thing

Destroy voting rights. That above all. And he’s good at it.