John Roberts and the Demise of Democracy in the United States

The most recent decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, concerning Donald Trump’s preferred tariff regime, has been greeted with a sigh of relief in many quarters inside the United States as well as around the globe.[1]
 
Judicial enabler of a U.S. shift toward autocracy
 
And yet, nobody should lose sight of the fact that this one decision, at best, is but a very small step toward reascerting a meaningful form of the separation of powers.  
 
Not just in recent time, but in a slew of decisions dating back to 2010, John Roberts, the Chief Justice, has been assiduously laying the groundwork for two previously unimaginable developments: First, a massive expansion of the powers of the President of the United States and second, a judicial push as the enabler of a shift toward autocracy in the United States.  
 
Both are judicially induced developments that run completely counter to the will of the country’s founders.  Indeed, in a way they constitute a resurrection of the royal privileges that gave rise to the American Revolution in the first place.
 
A matter of global concern
 
This is an alarming development not just for the U.S. itself, but also beyond its borders.  After all, the U.S. has long been regarded as the champion of democracy and freedom on the international stage. 
 
Few observers would have ever thought such a shift possible in a country that has always prided itself on having a strong civil society as well as a deeply rooted system of checks and balances to protect it against power grabs.
 
The Chief Justice of the United States as a key enabler of autocracy
 
Given this development, the role of the U.S. Supreme Court and especially that of its leader, John Roberts, warrant close scrutiny.
 
John Roberts was appointed Chief Justice in 2005, promising an era of judicial restraint and respect for precedents. Twenty years later, the record shows that he has moved far away from those promises.
 
Roberts’ genial demeanor and careful rhetoric in public may have earned him a reputation as a cautious institutionalist, but he is using that reputation as camouflage for tearing up the well-established institutional web of the United States, including the separation of powers.
 
In a seemingly never-ending series of Supreme Court decisions that are not just shaped, but driven by Roberts, the Chief Justice is dismantling legal frameworks that, while imperfect, serve to protect the voice of citizens and the limits of executive and economic power in the United States.
 
Institutional responsibility?
 
In the past, Roberts often pointed out that the Supreme Court, in order to protect its own institutional legitimacy, avoids engagement in politics. However, his decisions reflect a partisan bias in decisions of the United States Supreme Court.
 
Roberts has come a long way in creating a constitutional architecture tailor-made for a leader with autocratic ambitions. The Chief Justice and his Court act as the leader’s personal anti-democratic clean-up brigade. No wonder Donald Trump likes John Roberts.
 
The “unitary executive theory”
 
The most important tool in that campaign is the controversial “unitary executive theory”[2] that has been promoted by Roberts.  It posits that executive power rests solely with an all-powerful president, who must have direct and unlimited control over the entire executive branch and whose role is reconfigured as the sole decision-maker in the enforcement of laws.[3]
 
The overriding goal is to eliminate the long-established system of checks and balances in the United States and to prevent dispersion of power within the executive branch. This also applies to personnel decisions such as the dismissal of heads of agencies that can now be fired solely because Donald Trump wants it – even though Congress established executive branch institutions as independent bodies in the interest of ensuring effective democratic control.  
 
Although he is not the most extreme proponent of this theory on the Supreme Court, Roberts has repeatedly handed down rulings that weaken independent oversight of the executive branch and concentrate power in the White House.  In various decisions, he has lifted restrictions on the president’s power to dismiss directors of agencies appointed by Congress, thereby undermining the independence of those agencies.
 
In addition, Roberts has rolled back the deference that the Court had granted to the interpretation of administrative regulations; he has subjected their enactment to a newly created “major questions doctrine” to subject their enactment to a new restriction.
 
Viewed individually, these decisions may appear to be merely a fine-tuning of the constitutional balance. Taken together, however, they shift power away from Congress and from independent agencies –- the very institutions that can counterbalance the power of the president.  As Trump demonstrates on an almost daily basis, a presidency under such circumstances degenerates into a dangerously uncontrollable source of power.
 
Contrary to his lofty earlier proclamations, by serving as Trump’s judicial enabler, Roberts is engaging in politics. And, as will be explained below, he is by no means acting as a quasi-neutral “primus inter pares.”
 
As a matter of fact, Roberts is institutionally responsible for Supreme Court decisions that are politically one-sided and that are de facto enabling decisions. In that manner, as an expression of his own free will, Roberts actively enables the erosion of America’s democratic guardrails.
 
It is especially revealing that the decision for a “unitary executive” was not made when the president’s effectiveness or even ability to act was limited by encroachment by the legislative branch. Rather, Roberts made it at a time when the return of Trump to the White House, with his well-known penchant for disregarding democratic procedures, was already a realistic prospect.
 
Definitely not back to the past
 
What is equally revealing is that Roberts’ ideal is not a United States of America that once existed.  Rather, it is one in line with “Project 2025,” the master plan for the total restructuring of the American state and society, on which Trump and his followers base many of their actions.
 
Their overriding goal is to get rid of all aspects of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal and Lyndon B. Johnson’s “Great Society,” the two major legislative packages in American politics aimed at balancing the divergent socio-economic conflicts and interests over the last hundred years.
 
The Roberts Court’s steady counter-revolution, from 2010 onward
 
The genius of John Roberts is that he persists in claiming institutionalism, while at the same time eroding democracy through his brand of instrumentalism.
 
In order to substantiate the thesis of his steady judicial path toward eroding democracy, we analyze relevant U.S. Supreme Court decisions under Roberts’ stewardship.
 
Exhibit 1: Money rules supreme in American democracy
 
In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010), Roberts joined the majority in unleashing unlimited corporate and union spending in elections. The ruling reframed political spending as protected speech under the First Amendment by re-defining a corporation from being a “legal person” to being a “natural person.”
 
This paved the way for billionaires and private support groups not directly linked to political parties (Political Action Committees and SuperPACs) to drown out the voices of ordinary voters. The result is a “democracy” more responsive to the super-wealthy than to the electorate.
 
Exhibit 2: Uprooting voting rights restriction (2013)
 
In Shelby County v. Holder (2013), Roberts wrote the majority opinion that struck down a central provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 – the requirement that certain jurisdictions with histories of racial discrimination must obtain federal clearance before changing voting laws.
 
To Roberts, the ruling was justified because he improbably argued, clearly favoring the Republican view of the land, that “things have changed in the South.”
 
Within hours, Republican-led states moved to implement restrictive voting measures, ranging from strict ID laws to shuttering polling places in minority communities.
 
The Supreme Court’s decision didn’t mandate voter suppression — it simply removed the strongest legal barrier against it. The effect was swift and measurable in undermining equal access to the ballot.
 
Exhibit 3: Politically motivated reconfiguration of Congressional seats (2019)
  
U.S.-style “redistricting” for legislative seats goes far beyond what anyone in other advanced democracies could imagine.  In other well-established democracies, geographically coherent districts that largely follow political boundaries are a requirement.
 
The crucial turning point here was the Supreme Court’s 2019 decision in Rucho v. Common Cause.  Roberts, writing for the majority, declared that claims of partisan gerrymandering present “political questions beyond the reach of the federal courts.” 
 
He thus removed federal judicial oversight as a safeguard against extreme partisan map-drawing.  This ruling, decided 5-4 along ideological lines, left disputes over redistricting to be handled by state courts and legislatures. 

This decision underpins what has been playing out in Texas recently. With no federal check on partisan manipulation of congressional districts, Texas Republicans are moving aggressively redrawing district maps to secure additional GOP seats in Congress.
 
At Trump’s command, they seek to gain five seats by packing many Democratic voters into gerrymandered, i.e., curiously configured districts. By diluting the political influence of minority populations, other districts are thus made “safe(r)” for Republicans.  The goal is to lock in a favorable partisan balance ahead of the 2026 mid-term elections. Republicans in other states are following Trump’s marching orders, which led Democrats in California to change districts in their favor there.
 
Exhibit 4:  Favoring Trump, not the presidency per se, with tactical decisions (2024)
 
When the 2024 presidential election raged, people wondered not so much whether Roberts was neutral, but what Roberts’ real motivation was.  Was he acting on behalf of a philosophy favoring the office of the Presidency – or on behalf of the person of Trump, the candidate?
 
While there is no sign that Roberts personally likes Trump, his decisions benefitted Trump, the candidate, and benefit Trump, the president. The Supreme Court’s record is appalling: the Court uses control over its docket to act quickly when that suits Trump, and slowly when a delay works better for him.
 
in Trump v. Anderson (2024), an “originalist” Supreme Court took only three months (from December 2023 to early March 2024) from the first lower court decision that raised the issue to reach a decision.   It negated Section 3 of the all-important post-Civil War 14th Amendment which disqualifies from office persons who have “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the United States.”
 
To most observers, that decision does not square with Trump’s complicity in the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. The Court did not deny that Section 3 is Constitutional law but held that it could not be applied unless Congress passes an implementing statute (a practical impossibility). Roberts got all justices to agree. The decision assured that Trump would be on the ballot in all fifty states.
 
While the Roberts Court acted rapidly in this instance, it did the opposite in other cases when slow-walking decisions suited the Republican cause.
 
Exhibit 5: Presidential immunity (2024)
 
For example, when there is no explicit provision in the U.S. Constitution, the Roberts Court tends to emphasize an “originalist” approach.  (This approach looks to the understanding of the text of the respective provisions established at the time of the writing of the Constitution).  Completely contrary to that approach, the Roberts Court drew out of thin air its endorsement of Trump’s assertion of presumptive presidential immunity.
 
Trump v. United States is among the most preposterous interpretations of the Constitution in U.S. history. The Supreme Court under Roberts ruled that a president has absolute criminal immunity for official acts done under core constitutional powers and presumptive immunity for other official acts, but no immunity for unofficial acts. The case made law of disgraced former President Nixon’s post-resignation amazing claim of May 1977: “Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.”  
 
The strange Nixonian turn aside, the Court’s decision was even more astonishing because scholars had thought the Court might not review the case; two distinguished lower courts had already rejected Trump’s claim.
 
Deciding with hyper-political timing, the Supreme Court delayed its decision until the very last day of its term, July 1, 2024.  Since the decision was announced only seven months before that year’s presidential election, this practically assured that the planned trial could not begin before the election. If that was not a politically inspired, if not a voluntarily subservient court decision, what is?
 
Many people wonder what led Roberts to do this.  Critics find his institutional claims incredible. The Chief Justice’s decision rejects one of the most American of legal tenets: No one is above the law. And yet, without authorization in the Constitution or legislation by Congress, Roberts has put the President, any President, above the law.
 
Exhibit 6: The birthright citizenship case (2025)
 
In Trump v. CASA, Inc., the birthright citizenship case, the Supreme Court curtailed nationwide injunctions without adequately dealing with the nationwide implications of that decision or providing an alternative for future cases. Instead, it directed that multiple courts had to decide for individuals.
 
If ever there was a case favoring the issuance of a nationwide injunction, the CASA case was seen as it. Already multiple lower courts had held the Trump order to deny birthright citizenship to individuals born in the United States (“ius solis”) for being blatantly unconstitutional. 
 
There was little doubt about that. The first sentence of the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”  
 
Moreover, the practical complexities of denying the ongoing relevance of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution were obvious. If individual challenges were required, what about those people who did not bring challenges, despite the provision protecting their right to citizenship as guaranteed inside the U.S. Constitution? And for those who did, would their individual claims differ based on which jurisdiction someone was born in?
 
That a U.S. Supreme Court acting in such a political manner, against the clear wording of a Constitutional Amendment, means nothing else than that, at a minimum, it has become a deliberate enhancer of legal – as well as political and economic – uncertainty.  That uncertainty, in accordance with partisan political positions, is a de facto Roberts creation.
 
The damage Roberts creates: The perniciousness of slowly eroding democracy
 
Couched in the formalism of legal reasoning, Roberts’s impact on American democracy is incremental and spreads out over decades.  But that does not make his way of hollowing out democracy any less insidious. Democratic decline rarely comes all at once, even though it did at the end of Germany’s Weimar Republic in 1933.
 
Outwardly, but deceptively, Roberts proceeds in an incremental fashion: a provision is struck down here, a precedent weakened there, then another norm previously considered sacred in the American republic is eroded.
 
It cannot reasonably be said that Roberts’s rulings abolish democracy outright.  However, they reshape its terrain so that the forces of concentrated wealth and unchecked executive power have the upper hand. The Chief Justice has thus found a way to claim institutionalism while eroding democracy through instrumentalism.
 
By limiting Congress’s ability to restrain the president, weakening voting protections and empowering the wealthy in politics, John Roberts, the presumably so genteel, non-revolutionary man, has helped create conditions where the democratic process is increasingly hollow — superficially perhaps procedurally intact, but substantively diminished.
 
This is why the Hindenburg comparison resonates. Both men operated within the legal frameworks of their time. Neither personally dismantled democracy, but each presided over decisions that empowered those who could. In Hindenburg’s case, the consequences were immediate and total. In Roberts’s, they are gradual — but potentially just as irreversible if left unchecked.
 
Institutional irresponsibility at work
  
History will not remember the doctrinal subtleties. It will remember whether, when the foundations of democracy were quietly being undercut, the Chief Justice stood as a guardian — or as an enabler. 
 
John Roberts has made his choice.  He is Donald Trump’s pliable instrument in converting the United States to an autocracy.
 
True, he could change his mind.  So, too, could Trump’s enablers in the United States Congress.
What is truly saddening at this stage is that only a few changes of mind by those who know better could suffice to create a stable American Republic.
 
The way out of the current dilemma

John Roberts’ fellow Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch made that point very clear in his concurring opinion in the February 2025 IEEPA tariff decision, when he wrote:
 
“It can be tempting to bypass Congress when some pressing problem arises. But the deliberative nature of the legislative process was the whole point of its design. Through that process, the nation can tap the combined wisdom of the people’s elected representatives, not just that of one faction or man.”[4]
 
If only some (Repubican) legislators were to take him up on his call to re-assert their role and responsibilities under the U.S. Constitution and stop being completely submissive to a relentlessly imperial President.