As key Supreme Court rulings await, Chief Justice Roberts says Constitution remains ‘firm and unchanging’

WASHINGTON (AP) — Chief Justice John Roberts said Wednesday that the Constitution remains a strong pillar of the country, a message that comes after a turbulent year for the nation’s judicial system with pivotal Supreme Court decisions on the horizon.

The nation’s founding documents remain “immutable and immutable,” Roberts said, referring to a century-old saying by President Calvin Coolidge. “It was true then, and it is true now,” Roberts wrote in his annual letter to the judiciary.

The letter comes after a year in which legal scholars and Democrats raised fears of a potential constitutional crisis as supporters of Republican President Donald Trump opposed provisions that slowed his far-reaching conservative agenda.

Roberts intervened at one point, issuing a rare rebuke after Trump called for the removal of a judge who ruled against him in a case involving the deportation of Venezuelan immigrants accused of gang membership.

The chief justice’s message on Wednesday focused largely on the country’s history, including a case from the early 19th century establishing the principle that Congress should not remove judges over controversial rulings.

While the Trump administration has faced opposition in lower courts, it has achieved a string of nearly two dozen Supreme Court emergency rule victories. The court’s conservative majority has allowed Trump to move forward for now on banning transgender people from the military, clawing back billions of dollars in federal spending approved by Congress, and moving aggressively on immigration and firing Senate-confirmed leaders of independent federal agencies.

The court also handed Trump some defeats over the past year, including in his push to deploy the National Guard in American cities.

There are other pivotal issues before the Supreme Court in 2026, including the debate over Trump’s push to end birthright citizenship and a ruling on whether he can unilaterally impose tariffs on hundreds of countries.

Roberts’ letter contained few references to those issues. The book opens with the history of a 1776 pamphlet entitled Common Sense, written by Thomas Paine, “a recent immigrant to Britain’s North American colonies,” and closes by encouraging Coolidge to “turn for solace” to the Constitution and declare independence “amidst all the confusion of party politics.”