I think he's being serious here.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said late Wednesday that partisan extremism is damaging the public’s perception of the role of the Supreme Court, recasting the justices as players in the political process rather than its referees. [...]
“It’s usually discussed as, ‘Oh, you’re in favor of this or you’re in favor of that,’ ” Roberts said in response to questions from law dean John F. O’Brien.
“In fact, our ruling is that whoever does get to decide this or that is allowed to do it, and that it’s not unconstitutional, that it’s consistent with the law. But we often have no policy views on the matter at all. And that’s an important distinction.”
The counterexample, of course, would be Justice Antonin Scalia, a man who at this point will choose whatever legal theory he momentarily feels like to decide a case in favor of the side every political observer assumes he will and will happily discard that theory for the next case. But if the court in general is rigorously corporate-favoring, or conspicuously willing to discard longstanding precedents in order to ratchet our laws one direction or another, that seems a topic worthy of discussion.
Or maybe it's because confirmation hearings are too politicized these days and everyone else should just shut up. Sure, that works too.
“When you have a sharply political, divisive hearing process, it increases the danger that whoever comes out of it will be viewed in those terms — if the Democrats and Republicans have been fighting so furiously about whether you’re going to be confirmed, it’s natural for some member of the public to think, well you must be identified in a particular way as a result of that process.
Other times someone gets appointed to the court after declaring themselves a humble umpire calling balls and strikes, and it's only after sitting themselves down in the big chair that it turns out they have some pretty strong opinions on which of our current laws need a rigorous pruning. But sure, it's probably just all in our heads.
