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In her new book “Without Precedent,” ex-Washington insider Lisa Graves quickly lets readers know why she is no fan of John Roberts, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Indeed, her first hint is splashed across the new work’s cover flap in big red letters: “How Chief Justice Roberts and His Accomplices Rewrote the Constitution and Dismantled Our Rights.”
Graves deftly focuses on how Roberts “ascended to the Supreme Court and for nearly two decades maintained a reputation as a fair referee despite using the Court to advance a reactionary political revolution in the law to undo widely popular policies” that had included environmental protections, controlling access to guns, allowing abortions, banning gerrymandering, and limiting political donations.
“Most people really have no idea who Roberts is, what a destructive force he is to American jurisprudence, and how he has helped fracture our political system and our society,” she contends. The chief justice “helped pave the way for Donald Trump to become the 47th president of the United States.”
In 2021, Trump was indicted on four conspiracy counts following the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, and efforts to overturn an election that Joe Biden clearly won. Two years later, the Roberts Court took up the case after the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit “compellingly and unanimously rejected Trump’s claim of immunity from criminal prosecution.”
The outcome, as this well-written book reminds, was both stunning and destructive. “John Roberts’s unprecedented decree was that Trump had committed no crimes, and could have committed no crimes, as long as he was acting in his official capacity as president … No court in American history had ever made such a ruling—the effect of which was to give Donald Trump a supreme exclusionary rule, in that almost nothing he said or did as president could ever be used against him in a criminal proceeding.”
In her book, Graves calls this majority ruling “the most nakedly partisan political act the US Supreme Court has ever engaged in, surpassing even the Rehnquist Court’s disgraceful intervention to stop the counting of ballots in ‘Bush v. Gore …’.”
She adds: “Whatever extremes Trump pursues in 2025 and beyond, these sins must fall at Roberts’s feet, too. Roberts broke the central pillar upon which our Constitution is built: The American president is not a king.”
The author is no newcomer to judicial politics. She previously served as chief counsel for nominations for the Senate Judiciary Committee for Vermont Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy, when he was the chair, and then ranking member. She has also been a senior adviser in all three branches of federal government and worked on both sides of the ragged political aisle.
Today, Graves is founder and director of True North Research, a national investigative watchdog group, and appears frequently on the “Legal AF” podcast. She is considered a leading expert on right-wing influence on the Supreme Court and other centers of power, and, since 2018, has been keeping watch on “the financial network around right-wing efforts to capture the Supreme Court.”
In “Without Precedent,” she delves into an intriguing array of monied groups and wealthy, religion-connected donors who have had links to all six Republican appointees on the current high court. And she outlines how a number of conservative organizations and wealthy individuals have been steering conservative candidates toward judicial appointments at state and national levels, as well as attracting promising young conservative lawyers to their pipeline for possible future judicial appointments.
Graves says she has observed Roberts’s legal actions since the early 1980s, when the future Chief Justice became a special advisor to Attorney General William French Smith and was tasked with helping Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman nominated to the Supreme Court, prepare for her Senate confirmation. Twenty-four years later, O’Connor retired, and Roberts was elevated to the court.
“He presented himself as a dedicated institutionalist who sought to uphold American judicial traditions,” she writes. “Far from being a protector, however, he has used his position as chief justice to orchestrate a pattern of extreme decisions that have unmoored American democracy from its foundations — and that was before Donald Trump’s three appointees joined the Court.”
“Without Precedent: How Chief Justice Roberts and His Accomplices Rewrote the Constitution and Dismantled Our Rights,” by Lisa Graves, Bold Type Books, 386 pages, hardback and ebook formats.
Si Dunn is a freelance writer in Franklin, Mass. He previously worked for newspapers in Texas and Arkansas and is a book reviewer for Lone Star Literary Life.
Email sidunn@sagecreekproductions.com.
In her new book “Without Precedent,” ex-Washington insider Lisa Graves quickly lets readers know why she is no fan of John Roberts, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Indeed, her first hint is splashed across the new work’s cover flap in big red letters: “How Chief Justice Roberts and His Accomplices Rewrote the Constitution and Dismantled Our Rights.”
Graves deftly focuses on how Roberts “ascended to the Supreme Court and for nearly two decades maintained a reputation as a fair referee despite using the Court to advance a reactionary political revolution in the law to undo widely popular policies” that had included environmental protections, controlling access to guns, allowing abortions, banning gerrymandering, and limiting political donations.
“Most people really have no idea who Roberts is, what a destructive force he is to American jurisprudence, and how he has helped fracture our political system and our society,” she contends. The chief justice “helped pave the way for Donald Trump to become the 47th president of the United States.”
In 2021, Trump was indicted on four conspiracy counts following the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, and efforts to overturn an election that Joe Biden clearly won. Two years later, the Roberts Court took up the case after the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit “compellingly and unanimously rejected Trump’s claim of immunity from criminal prosecution.”
The outcome, as this well-written book reminds, was both stunning and destructive. “John Roberts’s unprecedented decree was that Trump had committed no crimes, and could have committed no crimes, as long as he was acting in his official capacity as president … No court in American history had ever made such a ruling—the effect of which was to give Donald Trump a supreme exclusionary rule, in that almost nothing he said or did as president could ever be used against him in a criminal proceeding.”
In her book, Graves calls this majority ruling “the most nakedly partisan political act the US Supreme Court has ever engaged in, surpassing even the Rehnquist Court’s disgraceful intervention to stop the counting of ballots in ‘Bush v. Gore …’.”
She adds: “Whatever extremes Trump pursues in 2025 and beyond, these sins must fall at Roberts’s feet, too. Roberts broke the central pillar upon which our Constitution is built: The American president is not a king.”
The author is no newcomer to judicial politics. She previously served as chief counsel for nominations for the Senate Judiciary Committee for Vermont Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy, when he was the chair, and then ranking member. She has also been a senior adviser in all three branches of federal government and worked on both sides of the ragged political aisle.
Today, Graves is founder and director of True North Research, a national investigative watchdog group, and appears frequently on the “Legal AF” podcast. She is considered a leading expert on right-wing influence on the Supreme Court and other centers of power, and, since 2018, has been keeping watch on “the financial network around right-wing efforts to capture the Supreme Court.”
In “Without Precedent,” she delves into an intriguing array of monied groups and wealthy, religion-connected donors who have had links to all six Republican appointees on the current high court. And she outlines how a number of conservative organizations and wealthy individuals have been steering conservative candidates toward judicial appointments at state and national levels, as well as attracting promising young conservative lawyers to their pipeline for possible future judicial appointments.
Graves says she has observed Roberts’s legal actions since the early 1980s, when the future Chief Justice became a special advisor to Attorney General William French Smith and was tasked with helping Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman nominated to the Supreme Court, prepare for her Senate confirmation. Twenty-four years later, O’Connor retired, and Roberts was elevated to the court.
“He presented himself as a dedicated institutionalist who sought to uphold American judicial traditions,” she writes. “Far from being a protector, however, he has used his position as chief justice to orchestrate a pattern of extreme decisions that have unmoored American democracy from its foundations — and that was before Donald Trump’s three appointees joined the Court.”
“Without Precedent: How Chief Justice Roberts and His Accomplices Rewrote the Constitution and Dismantled Our Rights,” by Lisa Graves, Bold Type Books, 386 pages, hardback and ebook formats.
Si Dunn is a freelance writer in Franklin, Mass. He previously worked for newspapers in Texas and Arkansas and is a book reviewer for Lone Star Literary Life.
Email sidunn@sagecreekproductions.com.
