Impeach John Roberts

Published Feb. 5, 2010 at 9:47 p.m.
The Chief Justice lied
It is time for an enterprising and courageous member of the US House of Representatives to file articles of impeachment against the chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, John Roberts. The charge: lying under oath.

It is time for an enterprising and courageous member of the US House of Representatives to file articles of impeachment against the chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, John Roberts. The charge: lying under oath.

More than four years ago, testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee prior to the full Senate vote that approved his appointment, Roberts said: "Like most people, I resist labels. I have told people, when pressed, that I prefer to be known as a modest judge. And, to me, that means...an appreciation that the role of the judge is limited; the judge is to decide cases before them; they're not to legislate; they're not to execute the law."

In plain English, Roberts under oath declared himself to be a judicial minimalist, a proponent of judicial restraint, someone who holds that legislators — not judges — make the law. He all but said, "I am not now, nor have I ever been, a judicial activist."

And yet there was nothing modest or minimalist or restrained about Roberts's role in the recent Supreme Court ruling that held that corporations can spend unlimited amounts of money to buy as much political advertising as they want in any political election they choose.

In deciding that case, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, Roberts joined his three right-wing brethren, Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito, and sometimes-moderate Justice Anthony Kennedy (who wrote the opinion), to overturn two federal precedents and strike down scores of national and related state laws, nuking 103 years of campaign-finance reform in the process.

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