Photo: Bloomberg U.S. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan appeared in the Chicago area on Wednesday and, for the second time this week, hit out at her conservative colleagues who overturned Roe v. Wade and overturned precedent in other divisive decisions last term . “A court is legitimate when it acts like a court,” Kagan told an audience of law students and others at Northwestern University Law School. “He does not have the power to make political decisions. It has no power to make policy decisions. It is demarcated.” Kagan continued: “When courts become extensions of the political process, and people see them as extensions of the political process, and people see them as trying to impose personal preferences on a society independent of the law, then there is a problem. And that’s when there should be a problem.” He did not mention the court’s June decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overruled Roe. The decision was upheld by the three judges nominated to the court under President Donald Trump. Kagan made similar comments Monday night at an appearance in New York, days after Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. deplored public attacks on the court’s legitimacy in the wake of the Dobbs decision. RELATED: Supreme Court faces historic backlog amid signs of dissent People “are certainly free to criticize the Supreme Court, and if they want to say that its legitimacy is in question, they’re free to do that,” Roberts said at the appearance in Denver last Friday, continuing, “but I don’t understand the connection between the views which people disagree with and the legitimacy of the court”. Roberts, in the Dobbs decision, voted in favor of Mississippi’s restrictive abortion law, but did not join his five conservative colleagues in overruling Roe to end the federal constitutional right to abortion. Kagan, who was one of three dissenters in the Dobbs decision, told the Northwestern audience that one of the most important factors in the high court’s legitimacy was the adherence to precedent, except in unusual circumstances. “It’s what creates stability over time,” he said. “Most importantly, when we talk about the legitimacy of the court, [abiding by precedent] it keeps people from thinking it’s all about politics. … If new members of a court come in, and suddenly everything is accepted, … then people have the right to say “What’s going on there.” Kagan also participated in a tribute to the late Justice John Paul Stevens, a Chicago native whom she succeeded on the court. The law school unveiled a bust of Stevens and unveiled signs renaming a section of Chicago Avenue near its campus the Honorable John Paul Stevens Way. Stevens died in 2019. The new term of the Supreme Court begins on October 3.
