Will John Roberts stand up to Donald Trump?

Jeff Shesol sounds like he’s trying to talk himself into his own thesis here (gift link):

Of course, Mr. Trump might defy the court anyway — a historical breach with consequences that can scarcely be imagined. It could be the spark that sets off a revolt against the courts: copycat noncompliance by Republican governors and attorneys general. If any of this comes to pass, the chief justice will have no real recourse. The cudgels that lower courts use to sanction and disbar lawyers or fine officials and agencies are of little use against a rogue commander in chief. The court could threaten to hold the president in contempt. But that threat would be hollow: Without the support of federal marshals, who answer to Mr. Trump’s attorney general, Pam Bondi, the court cannot enforce its order. And Congress, for its part, will almost certainly line up behind Mr. Trump — as it has in nearly all matters, even when its own powers are being usurped. The court will stand alone, abandoned; and Chief Justice Roberts, it is safe to assume, will not escalate a conflict his institution has already lost.

He will, however, have one last tool in his arsenal: his voice. He might be reluctant to use it. In his year-end report, he observed that the judiciary is “ill-suited” to defend its own integrity, because “judges typically speak only through their decisions. We do not call press conferences or generally issue rebuttals.” But there is nothing typical about a constitutional crisis. Charles Evans Hughes, one of John Roberts’s most esteemed predecessors, might provide a model. In 1937, when Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed to expand the Supreme Court by adding up to six justices, Chief Justice Hughes drafted a letter refuting Roosevelt’s false claims about the court and permitted it to be read aloud in the Senate chamber. Critics called it a breach of judicial protocol, but Hughes took pride in dealing the court-packing plan a blow. “This letter,” he observed later, “appears to have had a devastating effect.”

That is too much to hope for here. No letter is going to deter Mr. Trump. Still, Chief Justice Roberts should say his piece. If Mr. Trump flouts a court ruling, the nation will need its chief justice to explain what is happening — and why the executive branch, for all its prerogatives, must be bound by the Constitution. The nation will need him to summon the bravery displayed by Danielle Sassoon — the interim U.S. attorney who quit last week rather than implement a corrupt order from the Justice Department — and by Hagan Scotten, the assistant U.S. attorney (and former Roberts clerk) who did the same. In a letter to the attorney general, Ms. Sassoon called the department’s directive “breathtaking and dangerous.” At a time of fear and acquiescence, her example has inspired many. Let us hope the chief justice is among them. His responsibility is greater; his courage must be, too.

For anyone who needed any more evidence that Roberts is a craven Company Man — the Company in question being Leonard Leo & the Judicial Reactionaries — Trump v. United States should have supplied it.

Roberts won’t stand up to Trump because as Shesol more or less admits, a SCOTUS whose orders are defied by both the president and Congress has no more power than a front pager at a Top `100 Political Science blog.

Because of that, Roberts will do everything possible to maneuver any case that would trigger outright defiance from the Trump administration into one of two bins: Total capitulation on its face, or some bullshit super narrow “minimalist” cuttlefish squirting rhetorical ink ruling that allows the SCOTUS to mostly or at least partially avoid the humiliation of simply being ignored by the administration.

As for enforcing the law, forget it Jake.

*Footnote: FDR’s “false claims” in the court expansion battle were strategic exaggerations about the administrative work load faced by the modern SCOTUS, to which he resorted in order to obscure the fact from the easily shocked public that he was intimidating the Court into not continuing to strike down New Deal legislation. Which he in fact managed to do, despite the standard historical story that the “court packing scheme” supposedly failed.