Judges given new permission to push their personal politics onto American subjects

A warning has been issued by a constitutional expert, whose opinion has been heard and adopted by Congress on numerous occasions, that America’s judiciary is going off the rails – and its new agenda for judges to express their personal political opinions “could not come at a worse time.”

Perhaps judges now will follow their written opinions, through which they have spoken for generations, with their own X accounts to lobby for support for themselves. Perhaps dissents now will be available on YouTube and Rumble?

The warning comes from Jonathan Turley, an expert on the Constitution, a highly regarded law professor and a sought-after commentator on all issues legal.

He was triggered by an overtly political move by the U.S. Judicial Conference, which advises on rules for judges accepting free food and travel, to adopt a “new policy that could materially alter the character of the American courts, allowing judges to engage in commentary to rebut what they deem ‘illegitimate forms of criticism and attacks.'”

That, he wrote, “Is not just injudicious, it is dangerous.”

“This ill-conceived change could not come at a worse time. Just as federal judges are raising eyebrows over their extrajudicial comments, the Conference is giving them a green light for such commentary,” he said.

He cited, first, the “vague” concept of a “measured defense” now allowed.

“The most irresponsible judges …. can now speak out against any threats that they deem are ‘undermining judicial independence or the rule of law … regardless of whether these comments rise to the level of persecution.'”

Turley noted he’s already pointed out the injudicious extrajudicial statements that have been unleashed by judges, who are supposedly neutral in their handling of legal fights.

District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan, an Obama appointee, was criticized for failing to recuse herself from the Special Counsel’s case against President Donald Trump after she made highly controversial statements about him from the bench. Chutkan lashed out at “a blind loyalty to one person who, by the way, remains free to this day.” That “one person” was still under investigation at the time, and when Trump was charged, Chutkan refused to let the case go.

Chutkan later doubled down when asked to dismiss a case due to Trump pardoning Jan. 6 defendants. After acknowledging that she could not block the pardons, she proclaimed that the pardons could not change the “tragic truth” and “cannot whitewash the blood, feces and terror that the mob left in its wake. And it cannot repair the jagged breach in America’s sacred tradition of peacefully transitioning power.”

One of Chutkan’s colleagues, Judge Beryl Howell, also an Obama appointee, denounced a Trump policy as “a revisionist myth relayed in this presidential pronouncement.”

Then there is Judge Amit Mehta, another Obama appointee, who has been criticized for conflicted rulings in Trump cases and his bizarre (and ultimately abandoned) effort to banish January 6th defendants from the Capitol. He called Trump’s policies “shameful.”

D.C. Circuit Judge Reggie Walton called Trump a “charlatan.”

U.S. District Judge Robert Pratt of the Southern District of Iowa made public comments calling Trump a “criminal.”

Even Ketanji Jackson, Joe Biden’s appointee to the Supreme Court, “declared publicly how she sees her position as a judge ‘as a wonderful opportunity to tell people in my opinions how I feel about the issues, and that’s what I try to do,'” Turley wrote.

And yet another judge whined to other judges at a conference that he was fretting that the White House would not do as he ordered.

The judges, Turley said, instead of being judges, are “erasing the distinction between our courts and our politics.”

“I have long admired Chief Justice Roberts and have been sympathetic to his efforts to defend the courts, including his response to personal attacks on judges by the President and others. I have also opposed calls to impeach judges such as James Boasberg despite my strong disagreement with some of his past opinions,” Turley said. “However, this ill-conceived change could not come at a worse time. Just as federal judges are raising eyebrows over their extrajudicial comments, the Conference is giving them a green light for such commentary.”