Will Justice Roberts skip the State of the Union?

Remember when President Obama took a shot at the Supreme Court during last year’s State of the Union address?

Go here to watch a short clip of it if you don’t.

President Obama (aka POTUS) chided the Supreme Court for their ruling in Citizens United, which overturned aspects of then current campaign finance law, specifically cutting off the shackles on corporations to allow them to spend money independently in candidate elections. He said:

“Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections,” Obama said. “Well I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people, and that’s why I’m urging Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to right this wrong.”

Justice Alito, as you can see in the video above, shook his head and mouthed what is widely believed to be “Not true, not true…”

Whether it was “not true” has been debated much since; the question remains: will more members of the Supreme Court (SCOTUS, if you didn’t catch it yet) skip this year?

Traditionally, the court maintains an aura of non-partisanship. It’s job is to interpret the law against the constitution, not to play a partisan role in making the law. This isn’t to say that the members of the court don’t lean one way or the other. But their job is not a partisan one.

When the President takes partisan cheap shots at the Justices of the Supreme Court, to their face, there isn’t much a Justice can do while maintaining his or her dignity. Justice Alito has already stated that he will join Justice Thomas  and Justice Scalia in skipping this year’s event; will Justice Roberts avoid it, as well?

Tune in tonight at 7 PM MST, 9 PM EST, to find out.

Related articles

• SOTU forecast: Pizzazz over policy (politico.com)
• The Question for the Chief Justice: To Show or Not to Show on Tuesday? (blogs.wsj.com)
• Obama’s SOTU Attack on SCOTUS (pumabydesign001.wordpress.com)
• Paul Ryan To Give GOP State Of The Union Response (minx.cc)
• George Will: SOTU ‘Pep Rally’ No Place for Supreme Court Justices (crooksandliars.com)