John Roberts’ year-end message was rightly taken to task for implying that criticism of the court’s corruption was inciting violence. If the Chief Justice can’t defend the right of the people to criticize the Supreme Court then they really have gone down the rabbit hole. But he made another point that’s worth looking at as well: Every Administration suffers defeats in the court system—sometimes in cases with major ramifications for executive or legislative power or other consequential topics. Nevertheless, for the past several decades, the decisions of the court, popular or not, have been followed. Within the past few years, however, elected officials from across the political spectrum have raised the specter of open disregard for federal court rulings. These dangerous suggestions, however sporadic, must be soundly rejected. I can’t think of any prominent Democrats making that argument but I suppose there might have been at one point. But as Bill Kristol notes in his Substack: [T]his sounds an awful lot like a subtweet of incoming Vice President JD Vance, who has repeatedly argued that Trump should ignore court orders that he believes unconstitutionally constrain his executive authority. “If the elected president says, ‘I get to control the staff of my own government,’ and the Supreme Court steps in and says, ‘you’re not allowed to do that’—like, that is the constitutional crisis,” Vance told Politico last March. “It’s not whatever Trump or whoever else does in response.” Roberts better hope asking nicely will do the trick. After all, he was the one who reached into…