From WNYC Studios, I'm Brian Lehrer.

This is my daily politics podcast.

It's Monday, May 12th.

Supreme Court justices have been speaking out recently, directly or indirectly,

about their role in preserving democracy

during the Trump administration. Politico, reported on a speech by Justice Katanji Brown Jackson,

to a judicial conference in Puerto Rico, where she used terms like threats and harassment,

attacks on our democracy with respect to the legal system,

said, quote, the attacks are not random, and that, quote, they seem designed to intimidate

those of us who serve in this critical capacity.

State legal affairs reporter Mark Joseph Stern noticed that report in Politico and wrote about it,

and we'll talk to him in a minute. But it's not only Justice Jackson, most notably perhaps

Chief Justice John Roberts in a public appearance recently, and his understated way, you know how he is,

also seemed to feel the need to reinforce the idea of judicial independence.

The only real political science innovation in our constitution,

I mean, you know, parliaments have been around for 800 years and obviously executives is the

establishment of an independent judiciary even places you think are

similar as like like England the judiciary in England was part of

Parliament I mean they sat in the House of Lords

and because Parliament was supreme. But in our Constitution judges and the

judiciary is a co-equal branch of government separate from the others with the

authority to interpret the Constitution as law and strike down

...