Roberts Slams ‘Dangerous’ Enmity Toward Supreme Court Justices

US Chief Justice John Roberts said hostility toward individual Supreme Court members was creating a dangerous environment, in his first public comments since the president blasted justices who voted to strike down his global tariffs.

“Personally directed hostility is dangerous, and it’s got to stop,” said Roberts in a conversation at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy.

Roberts didn’t mention President Donald Trump by name and said he wasn’t referring to “any one political perspective.” But his comments came less than a month after an extraordinary verbal attack from Trump in response to the 6-3 ruling that upended his signature economic policy.

John Roberts during a State of the Union address in the House Chamber of the US Capitol in Washington, DC, on Feb. 24.

Photographer: Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg

At a news conference following the ruling, Trump assailed justices who ruled against him as “fools,” “lapdogs,” “unpatriotic,” “disloyal to our Constitution” and “an embarrassment to their families.” He suggested, without offering evidence, that they could have been influenced by foreign entities.

Read More: Judges Mull ‘Extraordinary Times’ Over Threats, Trump Era

Federal judges have faced hundreds of threats in recent years amid heightened rhetoric about judicial rulings. The son of US District Judge Esther Salas was murdered in 2020 by an attorney posing as a delivery driver, and Justice Brett Kavanaugh was the subject of an assassination attempt in 2022.

Judges and their families have also received unsolicited pizza deliveries. It is part of a trend of implied threats intended to convey that the unknown sender knows where they live.

Roberts said judicial opinions were fair game for criticism short of personal attacks.

“The problem sometimes is that the criticism can move from the focus on legal analysis to personalities,” he said.

To contact the reporter on this story:
Greg Stohr in Washington at gstohr@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Elizabeth Wasserman at ewasserman2@bloomberg.net

Sara Forden

© 2026 Bloomberg L.P. All rights reserved. Used with permission.