Somehow the N.Y. Times Made Me Sympathetic To Chief Justice Roberts

My 2013 book, Unprecedented, offered this vignette about how Chief Justice Roberts fled the United States to a safe refuge after the decided NFIB v. Sebelius.

The day after the Court’s term concluded, he left the country to teach at a summer program for law students in Malta, organized in part by the South Texas College of Law, where I teach. Before he departed, Roberts joked that he was retreating to an “impregnable island fortress.” Students found Roberts was in very good spirits, no doubt enjoying the respite from the pressure.

I’ve often thought about this remark. Roberts has been under siege from the left and the right for the last quarter century. (I am responsible for much of that angst.) Whether or not this criticism affects Roberts’s decisions, he does not respond in kind. He has given very few interviews, and when he speaks up, it is to defend the judiciary as a whole, and not him in particular. My one interaction with the Chief was pleasant enough.

I don’t know that Roberts has been back to Malta, but his regular “impregnable island fortress” is Hupper Island, a small island about 90 minutes from Portland, Maine. I hadn’t given much thought of this spot since Roberts had a seizure at his summer home in 2007. Since he joined the Court, Roberts and his family would seek solace from the swamp at Hupper Island after the Court dismisses for the term. But of late, despite the Chief’s best efforts at steering a middle course, the people of Maine have been intent on making Roberts’s life miserable. They protest outside his home on kayaks and accost him in public. Even his friends are shamed from attending events with the Roberts family.

I was not aware of these changes. What happens of Hupper Island stays on Hupper Island. Until the New York Times got to it. Jodi Kantor wrote a lengthy expose about how the neighbors feel. She interviews a few of Roberts’s friends and far more of his foes. We learn nothing about the Court, or Roberts’s decision. Unlike the silly story about Martha Ann Alito’s flags, there is no allegation that Roberts did anything wrong. The sole effect, and indeed purpose, of this article, is to show how Roberts is alienated in his family summer home. We learn nothing about Roberts, but learn lots about the awful liberals of Hupper Island. I fear this piece may make it impossible for Roberts to return in the future.

To make things even worse, Kantor outs Roberts’s daughter as a liberal. She has done nothing to put herself in the public eye. She had the audacity to defend her father, whom she loves. The Daily Beast blares, “Conservative Justice’s Daughter Outs Herself as Secret Liberal.” No. Not even close. Becca Shaw Glaser–a columnist who urged neighbors to give the Chief the middle finger–outed Roberts’s daughter.

Only the Old Gray Lady could me me sympathetic to the Chief. Even John Glover deserves a refuge from scoundrels like me.