commentary
Twenty years of the Roberts Court has wreaked shocking damage. Is the Voting Rights Act next?
Published
October 15, 2025 6:30AM (EDT)
Supreme Court Justice John Roberts (Photo illustration by Salon/Getty Images)
The chief justice arrived from central casting, in the guise of the midwestern dad next door, remembering the Indiana farmland of his boyhood and promising that he viewed the job through the eyes of another American civic religion: Baseball. John Roberts would simply be the umpire, calling balls and strikes, with no rooting interest — save the integrity of the Supreme Court.
This mythic nonsense has somehow persevered for more than two decades. During that time, Roberts has established himself as something more than just the chief justice. He is the most effective and successful Republican political operative of his generation.
It’s not only that the Roberts Court has enabled President Donald Trump’s muscular, extra-constitutional use of executive power, while also awarding him an entirely fictitious notion of presidential immunity that shields Trump from nearly all accountability. Roberts has also pushed the Constitution to the right and handed conservatives wins on abortion, guns, the environment, voting rights and the regulatory state that scarcely could have been imagined 20 years ago.
How has he gotten away with this, while maintaining his reputation as a genial institutionalist? The media and the legal community deserves some blame: By disguising hardball politics as constitutional theory, Roberts capitalized on longstanding deferential traditions and incentives within media court-watchers and academics. (The public, less easily impressed, has seen through this. The Court’s approval ratings have sunk to its lowest levels ever during Roberts’s tenure.)
Most importantly, Roberts is an extraordinarily patient bulldozer. He plays space-age chess with precision; he moves slowly, steadily, technically. Even when he rewrites precedent and invents his own doctrines, his steps have been plotted years in advance.
Most importantly, Roberts is an extraordinarily patient bulldozer. He plays space-age chess with precision; he moves slowly, steadily, technically. Even when he rewrites precedent and invents his own doctrines, his steps have been plotted years in advance. Some colleagues may wish to go faster. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito would toss the lobster into boiling water, oblivious to screams. Roberts turns up the heat so slowly it never notices it’s in a buttered roll.
The chief justice has a pattern. Whenever Roberts makes a dramatic move in a case involving high stakes for democracy, such as in Citizens United and Shelby County, he favors a baby step first. Call it the John Roberts two-step. He is such a master that this sometimes earns him praise as a consensus builder — even when the ultimate result is quite radical. It’s why an upcoming case should have everyone who cares about fair representation deeply concerned. The Roberts Court has already taken step one.
On the Roberts timetable
On Wednesday, the Roberts Court will hear Callais v.