Chief Justice discusses importance of, and threats to, "independence of judges" in his annual year-end report

The Chief Justice of the United States always closes out a calendar year by releasing a year-end report on the federal judiciary.  This year, the Chief's "2024 Year End Report on the Federal Judiciary" is a quite lenthy and interesting essay on the history, importance and threats to judicial independence.  The whole essay is worth multiple reads, and here are a few notable paragraphs from the middle of the essay:

At the end of the day, judges perform a critical function in our democracy. Since the beginning of the Republic, the rulings of judges have shaped the Nation’s development and checked the excesses of the other branches.

Of course, the courts are no more infallible than any other branch.  In hindsight, some judicial decisions were wrong, sometimes egregiously wrong. And it was right of critics to say so.  In a democracy — especially in one like ours, with robust First Amendment protections — criticism comes with the territory. It can be healthy.  As Chief Justice Rehnquist wrote, “[a] natural consequence of life tenure should be the ability to benefit from informed criticism from legislators, the bar, academy, and the public.”

Unfortunately, not all actors engage in “informed criticism” or anything remotely resembling it.  I feel compelled to address four areas of illegitimate activity that, in my view, do threaten the independence of judges on which the rule of law depends: (1) violence, (2) intimidation, (3) disinformation, and (4) threats to defy lawfully entered judgments.

In addition to an interesting essay, the 2024 year-end report includes federal "workload of the courts" data in an appendix. Here are some of the provided data that might most interest federal criminal justice fans:

In the regional courts of appeals, filings remained fairly stable, falling less than one percent from 39,987 in fiscal year (FY) 2023 to 39,788 in FY 2024. This was an 18 percent drop from FY 2019, the last full fiscal year prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Total civil appeals were down two percent from the prior year to 21,270. Criminal appeals increased four percent to 10,067.

Appeals by pro se litigants, which amounted to 48 percent of filings, increased three percent to 19,101. Prisoner petitions accounted for 21 percent of appeals filings (a total of 8,388), and 87 percent of prisoner petitions were filed pro se, compared with 38 percent of other appeals filings....

The federal district courts docketed 69,673 criminal defendant filings (excluding transfers) in FY 2024, an increase of six percent from the prior year and a reduction of six percent from FY 2020. The largest categories were filings for defendants accused of immigration offenses, which increased 30 percent to 25,446, and filings for defendants charged with drug offenses, which fell eight percent to 16,735.

Ninety percent of total filings for defendants charged with immigration-related offenses were received by the five districts on the southwestern border: the District of Arizona, the Southern District of California, the District of New Mexico, the Southern District of Texas, and the Western District of Texas....

A total of 121,777 persons were under post-conviction supervision on September 30, 2024, a decrease of one percent from the prior year and a reduction of five percent from FY 2020. Of that number, 109,174 were serving terms of supervised release after leaving correctional institutions, a decrease of one percent from FY 2023.

Cases activated in the pretrial services system, including pretrial diversions, rose two percent to 72,899.