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There is a tendency among even the most committed adherents to the rule of law to respond with “Nothing is gonna change” nihilism to even big legal wins. This is also true of big legal losses. On this week’s Amicus podcast, Dahlia Lithwick spoke with former Solicitor General of the United States Donald B. Verrilli Jr. about this propensity to dismiss the importance of Supreme Court wins and losses alike and the degree to which Chief Justice John Roberts has legitimately earned his recent glow-up. Verrilli served as solicitor general from 2011 to 2016. He’s now a partner with Munger Tolles & Olson, and he has handled a host of big recent cases at the U.S. Supreme Court, including victories in Moore v. Harper, which rejected the “independent state legislature” theory, and California v. Texas, which again upheld the Affordable Care Act. As solicitor general, he argued some of the most consequential cases heard at SCOTUS in the Obama era, including the ACA case and Obergefell, which recognized the right to marriage equality. This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Dahlia Lithwick: I want to ask you about the tariffs decision. The court is, by design, insulated from the world and covered in Bubble Wrap, thanks in part to the justices’ lifetime tenure. The justices don’t care what you’re doing out there on the plaza; they are just brains in a vat. This made us crazy during the insurrection case two terms ago, because if you listened to oral arguments in that case, you might never know that the insurrectionists were planning to hang Mike Pence across the street from the court. 

But the week before last, there was a really interesting turn where we saw that dynamic flipped completely on its head. You had the justices in the majority who seemed to care not at all that Donald Trump had been leveling real threats against them for months. Instead, they wrote what was in essence a series of dueling law-review articles on the major-questions doctrine. That raises this question for me: Is this worth a second look? 

Yes, the court is clueless and out of touch—but sometimes judicial independence and lifetime tenure is a good thing. This is part of a larger question of the Roberts glow-up that happened in the wake of this decision, where everybody’s in love with him again. The chief justice didn’t just mouth platitudes about judicial independence in this case—the court stood up for it, even if it was a day late and a dollar short. Is this a case of credit where it’s due? 

Donald Verrilli: I think I agree with you, but I worry that he may gravely disappoint you within months on some other matter, or on this very thing.

Let’s call it weeks, Don. 

Some people have looked at the tariffs case, for example, and said, “Ah, they’re just voting........

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