Lawyers dispute Chief Justice Roberts' claim about an 'independent' judiciary

Ralph Hallow:

The top jurist of the world’s leading democracy has issued an absurdity of monumental proportions.

“We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges,” U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said on Wednesday. His words were meant as a rebuke to President Trump for having called an Obama-appointed liberal jurist in San Francisco an “Obama judge” after he ruled against the Trump administration on migrant asylum. The case is likely to go to the notoriously liberal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, the rampant leftist partisanship of which Mr. Trump called a “disgrace.”

Extolling the unmitigated virtues of the federal bench as a whole, Mr. Roberts described it as “an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them. That independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for.”

“Roberts has clearly never met any of the 9th Circuit judges. Good grief!” said attorney and Small Business Administration official Holly Turner. “And since when do justices send press statements out?”

Chief Justice Roberts‘ statement stretched federal election-laws attorney Cleta Mitchell’s credulity past the breaking point.

“I have the greatest respect for the chief justice,” she said. “But he is living in a fantasy world when he describes the judicial branch of government as a collection of fair-minded, independent, Constitution-loving umpires just following the law.”

As attorney and Liberty Council founder Mathew Staver notes, people have always referred to judges by citing the president who nominated them. The reason is obvious to all but, apparently, Chief Justice Roberts.

“Judges have too often allowed their political ideology to cloud their objective interpretation of the law,” Mr. Staver said. “If judges were neutral and interpreted the law, rather creating it, people would stop referring to them by the president who nominated them.”

On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Jon S. Tigar in San Francisco ordered the Trump administration to resume accepting asylum claims no matter where or how migrants jumped our southern border.

Judge Tigar interpreted the law to mean the president may not invoke his national security powers to protect the integrity of our borders. Preposterous.
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It has been obvious since Trump's election that his political opponents have been forum shopping for judges who will try to thwart his agenda.  Why else would a district judge in Hawaii be issuing a nationwide injunction or a judge in San Francisco issuing an order on asylum?