In contrast to the kerfuffle over Justice Sam Alito’s answers to Lauren Windsor, Chief Justice John Roberts said all the right things.

Ms. Windsor pressed the chief justice about religion, saying, “I believe that the founders were godly, like were Christians, and I think that we live in a Christian nation and that our Supreme Court should be guiding us in that path.”

Chief Justice Roberts quickly answered, “I don’t know if that’s true.”

He added: “I don’t know that we live in a Christian nation. I know a lot of Jewish and Muslim friends who would say maybe not, and it’s not our job to do that.”

But Windsor kept pushing because everybody knows Roberts is part of the bad team.

When Ms. Windsor pressed him on whether he thought that there was “a role for the court” in “guiding us toward a more moral path,” the chief justice’s answer was immediate.

“No, I think the role for the court is deciding the cases,” he said.

Whether you deem Alito’s answers bad or not, C.J. Roberts’ responses were undoubtedly better. So that makes Roberts one of the good guys? Not quite.

Recent Scandals Reveal Weakness of the New SCOTUS Code of Conduct

And the fecklessness of Chief Justice John Roberts’s leadership.

Fecklessness? What did Roberts do that’s feckless?

This much is true: The code is, indeed, a codification of how the Court has long governed itself—answerable to no one, without firm limits on behavior, and indifferent to ethical lapses.

Granted the Supreme Court’s Code of Conduct is toothless, but then, there was never any mechanism by which it could have been anything else. Unsatisfying as that is, there was never any other possibility beyond impeachment, the only constitutionally cognizable means by which a Supreme Court justice can be told what to do. So how does this become Roberts’ fault?

Chief Justice John Roberts, by continuing to ignore each scandal and refusing to appear before a congressional committee, ensures his legacy as an ineffectual leader whose weak code of conduct will be seen as grossly inadequate and a stain on the Court.

To some extent, it’s true that Roberts is no Earl Warren, capable of using his personal charisma and moral suasion to get his fellow justices to recognize and appreciate the power of radical decisions when unanimous rather than splintered. But that didn’t happen because Earl Warren issued an edict, told his fellow justices to do as he tells them or else, or stood up in conference and told them, “I’m CJ and you’ll do as you’re told.”

What people fail to grasp is that the Chief Justice, oddly the only justice required by the Constitution, has no power or authority over the other justices. The only perk of office is that he gets to assign who writes the opinion of the Court, but only when he’s in the majority. Beyond that, he’s one vote of nine. Nothing more.

But why, as an institutionalist and keeper of the Least Dangerous Branch’s integrity, has C.J. Roberts not spoken out publicly against what many perceive as the ethical lapses of the two rightmost justices, Alito and Clarence Thomas? There is nothing the precludes him from doing so, from voicing an opinion that two of the nine are making the others look bad.

Except this appeasement of the Friends of Sheldon Whitehouse would create a untenable situation on the Court. On the one hand, it would only feed into the outrage of outsiders while doing nothing effective to change the actions of justices like Alito or Thomas, or RBG or KBJ. On the other hand, any ability to persuade his fellow justices to clean up their act by privately discussing its impact on the institutional integrity of the Court would be squandered.

No matter how deeply the left hates Alito and Thomas, the reality remains that Chief Justice Roberts can’t force them to do anything. He can’t make them recuse if they don’t want to. He can’t make them vote one way or another. He can’t make them resign no matter how many flags are raised or RVs are driven.

Of course, if Congress believes they have engaged in high crimes and misdemeanor, they can impeach one or both. That’s the remedy the Constitution provides for a rogue justice. The only remedy.