"I did nothing, and I did it well. " William Rehnquist, when questioned a posteriori about his role as president of the United States Supreme Court in the trial for the impeachment of the democratic president Bill Clinton, in 1999, had chosen the register of humor. More than twenty years ago, everything lent itself to it. The leader of the Republican majority, Trent Lott, and that of the Democratic minority, Tom Daschle, had agreed on the terms of a trial, the reason for which, perjury to cover an extramarital affair, appeared to be relatively anecdotal.
William Rehnquist's successor, John Roberts, who was appointed by Republican President George W. Bush in 2005, took up residence in the Senate on Thursday, January 16, after being sworn in in a completely different context. He will direct a procedure which deeply opposes the two big parties of the United States in a political polarization undoubtedly unprecedented in the recent political history of the country.
As the lawyer Frank Bowman recalled on January 10 on the blog of the Supreme Court, the presence of John Roberts, which reinforces the solemn dimension of the trial, is constitutionally explained for reasons of common sense. The Founding Fathers had estimated that the presidency of the Senate could not be occupied in this exceptional circumstance by its true holder, the vice-president of the United States, to avoid any form of conflict of interests.
The conduct of a dismissal trial, however, is purely formal. The latter being essentially political and not judicial, the President of the Supreme Court is not required to behave like that of a court. He is less motivated to jump into the arena than to enter it would run the risk of undermining the legitimacy of subsequent opinions issued by the highest court in the United States.
frictions
John Roberts has also already experienced some friction with Donald Trump. During the presidential campaign, the Republican candidate had taken on board the criticisms which had fallen on the president of the Supreme Court in 2012 when he joined the judges appointed by democratic presidents, saving by his choice the system of cover health wanted by Barack Obama and adopted by Congress. Donald Trump also forced John Roberts to call on him to uphold the independence of the judiciary after virulent attacks on a federal judge who blocked a 2018 asylum measure.
