Simson is Macon Chair in Law and former dean at Mercer Law School, professor emeritus at Cornell Law School, and a member of the board of directors of Lawyers Defending American Democracy.
You don’t have to be a big fan of Chief Justice John Roberts to concede that he wouldn’t dream of jet-setting around the country at a conservative billionaire’s expense or hanging outside his home a favorite flag of 2020 election deniers or Christian nationalists. But then why, you must be wondering, was he so unwilling to even meet with the Senate Judiciary Committee when invited in April 2023 to discuss Justice Clarence Thomas’ seemingly conscience-free jet-setting and when invited last month to discuss Justice Samuel Alito’s perhaps even more ethically challenged flag-hanging?
One thing’s for sure: You won’t find the answer in either of the letters the chief justice wrote declining the committee’s invitations. Of course, he wasn’t so impolite as to give no reasons, but the reasons he gave were all stated in such a cryptic or conclusory way that they seemed designed mainly to send the message, “I’m not coming, and I don’t even have to convince you I’m right not to come.”
In both letters he broadly alluded to “separation of powers concerns and the importance of preserving judicial independence.” Separation of powers and judicial independence undoubtedly are principles fundamental to our Constitution, but neither was genuinely threatened by the chief justice meeting with the committee. Both principles have never been understood as absolutes. If they don’t leave room for Congress to question a chief justice when justices act in ways that cast doubt on the Supreme Court’s ability to render impartial justice, our entire system of government is in big trouble.
In one letter, Roberts called attention to “the practice we have followed for 235 years pursuant to which individual Justices decide recusal issues.” Very simply, he seemed to be saying, the Supreme Court since its inception has left it to each justice to decide whether he or she needs to recuse; therefore, it’s illogical to ask a chief justice to discuss another justice’s recusal decisions.
But the longevity and wisdom of a practice are two very different things. Even if we assume that giving individual justices complete autonomy over their own recusal decisions made sense 235 or even 35 years ago, that hardly establishes that it makes sense today, particularly in the teeth of the powerful evidence to the contrary supplied by Thomas’s and Alito’s decisions.
Surely that distinction wasn’t lost on Roberts. I strongly suspect, though, that he was willing to bite the bullet and live with Thomas’s and Alito’s ethically impoverished decisions because he believes that in general anyone not on the Supreme Court, including the many senators on the Judiciary Committee who are lawyers, can’t understand as well as a justice what’s at stake in justices’ recusal decisions.
Roberts undoubtedly recognized that Thomas’ and Alito’s recusal decisions can leave a lot to be desired. He must have been thinking, though, that in the long run the American legal system is best served by the Supreme Court keeping recusal decisions entirely in-house and rejecting any efforts, however well-meaning, of the other branches to review them.
That understanding of the chief justice’s thinking fits neatly with the message sent by the toothless Code of Conduct that the Supreme Court, after much prodding, finally released last fall. It’s also of a piece with the various majority opinions that the chief justice has authored or joined that reject agencies’ interpretations of the federal statutes they are charged with administering. Time and again, those opinions implicitly suggest that the justices are so intellectually gifted that they need not give any particular deference to agencies’ special subject-matter expertise.
Of course, I can’t say for certain that my rendition of the chief justice’s thinking captures what he was actually thinking. I have little doubt, though, that it captures well the message that his refusal actually sent, and it was a message of extraordinary hubris.
There’s simply no basis for his apparent assumption that justices’ recusal decisions are somehow beyond the ken of anyone not sitting on the court. Yes, Supreme Court recusals are unique in some ways. Most importantly, if a justice recuses, no other judge can be designated to sit in their place. To imply, however, as Roberts’ refusal to meet with the Judiciary Committee seemed to do, that senators are somehow incapable of factoring that difference into their thinking when assessing Thomas’ and Alito’s recusal decisions is insulting and wrong.
Public confidence in the Supreme Court is a precious commodity much in need of restoration. Rather than squandering it further by demonstrations of hubris, Roberts should exercise his leadership in ways that model for the other justices and communicate to the public a healthy sense of humility.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.