It's not news that a man in Washington sits atop one of the three branches of government who interprets the Constitution as it suits him, disregards precedent and asserts he knows better than any experts. He has undone key Obama-era initiatives and tolerated glaring conflicts of interest involving his spouse.

Of course, I am speaking of Chief Justice John Roberts.

Trump has declared the Constitution gives him the "the right to do whatever I want as president." Although the document promises no such thing, Roberts effectively ratified that claim in Trump v. United States. He wrote, "The President is absolutely immune from criminal prosecution for conduct within his exclusive sphere of constitutional authority." In her scathing dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor points out that Roberts is granting immunity to the president even if he "orders the Navy's Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival," "organizes a military coup to hold onto power," or "takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon."

This disregard for "settled" law has become a hallmark of Roberts' tenure on the Supreme Court. During his 2005 confirmation hearings, Roberts called the right to abortion established by Roe v. Wade "settled law of the land." And so it was, until the Roberts Court retracted it in its 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision. Roberts applied a similar willingness to overturn precedent in interpreting the Second Amendment. While the text of the amendment explicitly links gun rights to a "well-regulated Militia," Roberts selected Justice Antonin Scalia to write the majority opinion which disregarded that coupling and granted an unfettered right to gun ownership to individuals. Former Chief Justice Warren Burger, a Republican-appointed predecessor to Roberts, once called such an interpretation "a fraud on the American public."

The disregard affects even the very heart of American democracy. Over a century ago, President Theodore Roosevelt told Congress corporate contributions to political committees should be forbidden. That held until Roberts' deciding vote in 2010's Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission case, which invited unlimited "dark money" into American elections.

While Trump takes great relish in reversing Obama-era achievements such as the Paris Climate Accords, the record indicates Obama's policies were no favorite of Roberts' either. In voting against Roberts' confirmation as chief justice, then-Sen. Obama warned the judge used his skills "on behalf of the strong in opposition to the weak." Roberts proved Obama right in 2015 when he marshaled the votes to freeze the Clean Power Plan, which took on polluting utilities, before lower courts could even finish their review. Thus began the era of the "shadow docket," where emergency rulings are issued without full briefing or oral argument. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has warned the process has an "enormously disruptive and potentially corrosive effect" on the judiciary.

The parallel between Trump and Roberts extends even to the disregard of expertise. In 2016, Trump told The Washington Post he trusts his "common sense" over scientists. In June 2024, Roberts followed suit in his majority opinion overruling 40 years of precedent to ensure judges, not agency experts, have the final word on regulatory law. As Justice Elena Kagan noted, the Court seized "exclusive power over every open issue — no matter how expertise-driven or policy-laden."

Finally, there is the issue of conflict of interest. Amazon bid $40 million for Melania Trump's documentary, almost triple that of any other bidder. At the same time, Amazon's web services and Blue Origin, owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, have contracts with the federal government worth billions. Roberts appears to have also lived with a conflict for years. A former colleague of his spouse provided documents to Congress and the Justice Department indicating she had earned millions as a legal recruiter, at times from law firms with business before her husband's court.

In 2020, The New York Times called Trump "the greatest threat to American democracy since World War II." He is certainly a top contender. But Trump's time is limited by the calendar and the ballot box. Roberts has presided over the Supreme Court for 21 years and shows no sign of stepping down. If I were a betting man, I'd put my money on John Roberts for the long-term title.

Presidents are term limited; the Roberts Court is a lifetime sentence.

A renaissance man, Keith Raffel has served as the senior counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee, started a successful internet software company, and had six books published including five novels and a collection of his columns. He currently spends the academic year as a resident scholar at Harvard. You can learn more about him at keithraffel.com. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at creators.com.

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