Chief Justice John Roberts speaks up in Indy

INDIANAPOLIS — Generally hiding behind black robes and well-crafted court opinions, U.S. Supreme Court justices hardly ever speak outside of the courtroom.

That trend has been bucked during recent years, as Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts spoke and answered questions at the IU School of Law–Indianapolis.

“I think it’s a plus that judges are more willing and able to come see citizens face to face and to come and give everybody a chance to look us over,” said Indiana Chief Justice Randall Shepard.

Because justices have to be careful about commenting on cases that they could preside over in the future, questions from the invitation-only audience were less politically geared.

That precedence of silence didn’t stop Roberts from making headlines last month during a lecture at the University of Alabama.

When asked about events at this year’s State of the Union address and critical comments made by President Barack Obama over the Supreme Court’s ruling to lift a ban on corporations’ election spending, Roberts said he was disturbed by the president’s action.

“The image of having the members of one branch of government standing up, literally surrounding the Supreme Court, cheering and hollering while the court, according to the requirements of protocol, has to sit there expressionless, I think is very troubling,” Roberts said.

Roberts questioned whether or not the Supreme Court even needed to be present at the speech.

“And it does cause you to think whether or not it makes sense for us to be there,” he said. “To the extent the State of the Union has degenerated into a political pep rally, I’m not sure why we’re there.”

Law professor John Hill agreed with Roberts that the president’s actions were against decorum for a state of the union address.

“I thought Obama was way out of line in singling out the justices,” he said. “As a former constitutional law professor, he should have known better.”

Hill said the growing partisan nature of the address might be enough to keep Roberts away in the future, noting former justices William Rehnquist and David Souter, who were notorious for skipping the annual speech.

Roberts’ recent comments are just another step in a feud between him and Obama that goes back even before Roberts’ Supreme Court nomination in 2005.

Obama was only one of 22 senators to vote nay to Roberts’ nomination, and he questioned Roberts’ judicial philosophy.

“A political philosophy that typically errs on the side of the powerful rather than the powerless,” Obama said, “that’s a judicial philosophy that can make worse, can exacerbate some of the problems that we have in this country.”

The Supreme Court’s decision to lift monetary limits on the amount corporations can give during elections may have been the siding with the powerful notion to which Obama was alluding.

A recent Gallup poll found that 76 percent of Americans believe there should be a cap on the amount of funding corporations can give.

Law professor David Orentlicher said that historically it’s hard to find too many court decisions that diverge from public opinion.

“If they start issuing decisions that people don’t accept,” he said, “then they lose their political capital and their authority is diminished.”