Chief Justice John Roberts decries threats to judges, defiance of rulings

Jan. 1 (UPI) -- U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts has issued a call for greater protections of judges at all levels from threats and "doxxing" while decrying officials who may attempt to subvert the rulings of the courts.

Roberts penned his year-end report on the federal judiciary, published on New Year's Eve, recounting a history of threats to the courts and the measures taken to protect the judiciary from outside control.

U.S. Marshals report investigating more than 1,000 threats against federal judges over the last five years, according to Roberts. Some of these threats resulted in Marshals being assigned to full-time security detail to protect judges.

"Judges cannot hide, nor should they," Roberts writes.

The channels for these threats continue to create new needs for protections. Doxxing -- in which personally identifiable information about an individual or organization is made publicly available online -- and hackers pose a danger for the judicial system in a way that is unique to the modern age, he said.

The chief justice wrote that he is thankful for increased congressional funding for protection but added that lawmakers and elected officials have at times led the criticism of the judiciary.

"Within the past few years, elected officials from across the political spectrum have raised the specter of open disregard for federal court rulings," Roberts said. "These dangerous suggestions, however sporadic, must be soundly rejected."

It was Roberts who wrote the high court's majority opinion that affirmed President-elect Donald Trump's claim of presidential immunity last year, granting greater power to the president than what had previously been recognized.

The decision described a presumption of immunity that puts a higher standard on would-be prosecutors to prove that a president can be prosecuted for acts that are not within the realm of their official duties.

In Tuesday's report, Roberts said it is crucial that judicial independence be preserved.

"As my late colleague Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote, an independent judiciary is 'essential to the rule of law in any land,' yet it 'is vulnerable to assault; it can be shattered if the society law exists to serve does not take care to assure its preservation,'" Roberts writes. "But violence, intimidation, and defiance directed at judges because of their work undermine our Republic, and are wholly unacceptable."