One of my favorite movies is Mister Roberts, the 1955 comedy-drama set aboard the USS Reluctant in the Pacific during World War II. Henry Fonda plays Lieutenant Doug Roberts, the ship’s executive officer, serving under James Cagney’s Captain Morton, a petty authoritarian who makes life miserable for his crew.

When Morton denies the exhausted sailors shore leave, Roberts intervenes. He gets them their liberty, but at a price: he agrees to stop challenging the captain and gives up his requests for a transfer to combat duty.

He stands up to the man above him because someone has to stand up for the men below.

That scene came to mind when watching another Roberts—Chief Justice John Roberts.

The Trump administration has again gone to the Supreme Court on an emergency basis, seeking permission to implement new U.S. Postal Service requirements governing mail ballots before the midterm election. The rules would require election officials to identify mail-ballot recipients and use specified barcodes on ballot envelopes. The Postal Service could refuse to process ballot mail that fails to comply.

The rule grew out of Trump’s March executive order. Federal courts blocked key portions, and a federal judge later halted the Postal Service’s final rule. The administration now wants the Supreme Court to let the restrictions take effect.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani concluded that the challengers were likely to succeed in arguing that the requirements lacked congressional authority and could disrupt lawful voting this close to an election. The administration says the Postal Service is regulating mail under authority Congress has given it.

I’m not an attorney or constitutional expert, but it doesn’t take a law degree or black robe to know the difference between right and what Donald Trump intends.

This goes to the heart of democracy itself: the right of every eligible voter to cast a ballot for the candidate of their choice and have that ballot counted. Period.

Article I, Section 4 says the “Times, Places and Manner” of congressional elections are prescribed by the states, with authority to alter those regulations given to Congress—not the President.

Chief Justice Roberts has long supported greater presidential control over the executive branch. The “unitary executive” theory holds that Article II vests executive power in one President who must control those exercising it. In Seila Law v. CFPB, Roberts reiterated that without presidential authority to supervise executive officials, “the President could not be held fully accountable for discharging his own responsibilities.”

But the Court—in its considerable lack of wisdom—avoids the obvious. Who IS accountable?

Accountability cannot mean that everyone beneath the President answers upward while the President answers only to himself. That isn’t accountability. That’s unchecked control.

Article II, Section 3 points out that the Constitution requires the President to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” Faithfully. To me, that suggests stewardship, not ownership. Presidential power belongs to the office, not the person occupying it.

Roberts himself defended judicial independence in 2018 after President Trump referred to a federal judge as an “Obama judge.”

“We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges,” Roberts responded.

Independence and accountability must coexist. Too little independence turns public servants into instruments of whoever holds power. Too little accountability allows those who wield power to answer only to themselves.

There is a difference between loyalty to an office and loyalty to the person holding it—and between possessing power and possessing authority. Mister Roberts understood that. Captain Morton was his superior officer. But Roberts understood that rank did not relieve him of responsibility. Sometimes loyalty to an institution requires standing up to the person at its top.

Which brings us back to Chief Justice Roberts.

John Roberts does not have to oppose presidential power to insist that presidential power has limits. Someone who believes strongly in presidential authority should be especially concerned with defining where that authority ends. And when a President tests the law, we need a Mister Roberts with the moral leadership—backbone—willing to tell a President that his authority has reached its constitutional limit.

The question is whether Chief Justice Roberts will be that Mister Roberts—or whether, after a laundry list of decisions expanding presidential authority absent accountability, he will again conclude that presidential power should prevail.

The person who can command everyone beneath him must still answer to something above him.

In America, that something is the law.

As of September 6, the Supreme Court has not ruled. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has ordered responses by September 9.