The Roberts Defection, Confirmed
Looks like the rumors have been substantiated. CBS News' Jan Crawford (one of the best Supreme Court reporters out there) reporting this morning:
Chief Justice John Roberts initially sided with the Supreme Court's four conservative justices to strike down the heart of President Obama's health care reform law, the Affordable Care Act, but later changed his position and formed an alliance with liberals to uphold the bulk of the law, according to two sources with specific knowledge of the deliberations.
Roberts then withstood a month-long, desperate campaign to bring him back to his original position, the sources said. Ironically, Justice Anthony Kennedy - believed by many conservatives to be the justice most likely to defect and vote for the law - led the effort to try to bring Roberts back to the fold.
"He was relentless," one source said of Kennedy's efforts. "He was very engaged in this."
But this time, Roberts held firm. And so the conservatives handed him their own message which, as one justice put it, essentially translated into, "You're on your own."
I'm angriest about the decision and Chief Justice Roberts' role in it. But you know what's nearly as frustrating? I'll never be able to make a Justice Kennedy joke in good conscience again. Who would've thought? Anthony Kennedy -- there for us, unwaveringly so, when we needed him most.
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Comments:
May '12
Re: The Roberts Defection, Confirmed
What is also frightening is what happens next session when there is case that requires a thoughtful conservative majority and the chief justice has poisoned the well with this stunt.
Oct '10
Re: The Roberts Defection, Confirmed
"But you know what's nearly as frustrating? I'll never be able to make a Justice Kennedy joke in good conscience again."
You speak for many of us. The Bush family legacy marches on.
Jan '11
Re: The Roberts Defection, Confirmed
Four justices solidly in favor. Four solidly against.
And when Roberts approached the liberals about siding with them, how did they respond? They embraced the result, even if it meant they had to surrender their devotion to the Commerce Clause.
Shouldn't their eagerness to "abandon" something they fought so hard for ... shouldn't that have been a clue? A warning? If you offer a deal to your opponent that you'll give him X if he gives you Z, and he agrees to it - having previously staked everything on the truth of what he used to hold dear - what does that tell you?
It tells you that he'll take your offer, but he has no intention of living up to his end of the bargain.
Does anyone think this is the end of the Commerce Clause?
Nov '11
Re: The Roberts Defection, Confirmed
Maybe this just means that Roberts is extremely reluctant to overturn Congress no matter what, which might work in our favour on DOMA. Maybe.
True about Kennedy. Perhaps he is becoming more conservative overall with time? It also means all those people watching the oral arguments actually read the justices correctly. There was simply no way to predict Roberts' shift.
We were so close. This is when I simply have to step back and trust that God is in control... the fate of our nation is not really in one man's hands.
Edited on July 1, 2012 at 9:32pmNov '11
Re: The Roberts Defection, Confirmed
KC Mulville:
Shouldn't their eagerness to "abandon" something they fought so hard for ... shouldn't that have been a clue? A warning? If you offer a deal to your opponent that you'll give him X if he gives you Z, and he agrees to it - having previously staked everything on the truth of what he used to hold dear - what does that tell you?
It tells you that he'll take your offer, but he has no intention of living up to his end of the bargain.
Does anyone think this is the end of the Commerce Clause? · 4 minutes ago
If Roberts was pulling off some deep masterly stroke for conservatism, you'd think he would've been able to get at least one of the other four to go along with him.
Jun '10
Re: The Roberts Defection, Confirmed
raycon: "But you know what's nearly as frustrating? I'll never be able to make a Justice Kennedy joke in good conscience again."
You speak for many of us. The Bush family legacy marches on.
Is there something you don't like about Thomas and Alito? If you have any remnant of gratitude, at all, you have to appreciate #41 and #43 for not being Democrat presidents, in which case EVERY justice they nominated would be horrible. Okay, so they didn't bat a thousand, but the other side bats zero.
Dec '11
Re: The Roberts Defection, Confirmed
But you know what's nearly as frustrating?
If you will, Mr. Senik, pls allow me to rephrase your sentence: But you know what is most frustrating?
Answer: One's small business volume drops 50% on the day of the SCOTUS decision, one's portfolio drops 30 points and all due to circumstances beyond reasonable control.
Democracy? Free market? Capitalism? Do these glorious big ideas still truly exist in this country?
Edited on July 1, 2012 at 10:50pmApr '11
Re: The Roberts Defection, Confirmed
EThompson:
...
Democracy? Free market? Capitalism? Do these glorious big ideas still truly exist in this country? · 2 minutes ago
Yes, they are the new names for State-ism, Corporatism and Crony Capitalism. Wolves in our hero's clothing.
Nov '10
Re: The Roberts Defection, Confirmed
As I thought: CJ Roberts powdered out when the going got tough. He lacks political (and maybe moral and physical) courage. All of the sophisticated explanations are just whistling past the graveyard of our Constitutional system.
Nov '10
Re: The Roberts Defection, Confirmed
Leigh
KC Mulville:
Shouldn't their eagerness to "abandon" something they fought so hard for ... shouldn't that have been a clue? A warning? If you offer a deal to your opponent that you'll give him X if he gives you Z, and he agrees to it - having previously staked everything on the truth of what he used to hold dear - what does that tell you?
It tells you that he'll take your offer, but he has no intention of living up to his end of the bargain.
Does anyone think this is the end of the Commerce Clause? · 4 minutes ago
If Roberts was pulling off some deep masterly stroke for conservatism, you'd think he would've been able to get at least one of the other four to go along with him. · 1 hour ago
Or else his cover is infinitely deep.
Jan '11
Re: The Roberts Defection, Confirmed
Roberts is alleged to have tortured legal reasoning out of deference to Congress and the people they represent. How much respect do you show the people when you choose complicity in a major fraud against them over sound legal reasoning?
Note that the act only made it to the court because it was brought, debated and passed via fraud. Roberts knew this. Deference to its origins is deference to a fraud. Surely it is incumbent upon the court to point out such frauds, not promote them.
Roberts is also alleged to have sought a way to find O'care constitutional in order to preserve the court's reputation against allegations that its decisions were political. How much of its reputation would be preserved by an overtly political act by the Chief Justice?
If either allegation is true, Roberts would have resorted to extra-legal reasons to reach his conclusion. SCOTUS is respected for its legal judgement. We presume it's the best in the land. It's not the robes we respect, it's the reasoning. How much respect for the court will survive this travesty?
Dec '11
Re: The Roberts Defection, Confirmed
I think you are correct and due to his background (clerking for Rehnquist), in the words of Captain Renault in Casablanca, I am shocked...
Dec '10
Re: The Roberts Defection, Confirmed
This hurts more than the actual decision.
I'll have to draw on my inner Jonah Goldberg to describe my newly minted opinion of the Chief Justice [sic]:
He has now become to me a feckless cheese-eating crap weasel surrender monkey asshat.
I gave him the benefit of the doubt, but his behavior was egregious enough that the inner workings of the SCOTUS leaked out. That fact alone speaks volumes.
May '12
Re: The Roberts Defection, Confirmed
That sound you hear is my wailing and gnashing of teeth.
May '12
Re: The Roberts Defection, Confirmed
Bottom Line: His ruling doctrine was "Uphold the law. " Then he rationalized from there. He abandoned his post which was "Defend the Constitution.". Why? Who knows. I sense cowardice. Something called the fear of man. But there could be other reasons.
May '10
Re: The Roberts Defection, Confirmed
Kennedy can stray off the reservation with his "sweet mystery of life" musings, but he's always been very strong on enumerated powers/federalism issues, and understands the close nexus between these "structural" issues and individual liberty. See this excerpt from his recent opinion for the court in US v. Bond (2010), which exceeds our word court, but which I found on a National Review blog post by Carrie Severino titled: Justice Kennedy: Federalism Exists to Secure Individual Liberty.
I used to make fun of Kennedy (doing a poor imitation of Mark Steyn) - making him out to be a supercilious character - but given his role in trying his utmost to preserve our liberty in this crucial case, I now know I was wrong.
Mar '11
Re: The Roberts Defection, Confirmed
Hardly any of us here will ever get to meet John Roberts but with this ruling and these revelations we can all be assured we already know the kind of man he is. He's a wimp.
And not only is he a wimp, he's the kind of person who tried to convince someone else to change their mind to cover his butt, if the accounts can be believed, i.e. he could always blame it on Kennedy, for example, if the decision was 6-3 in favor of the mandate.
What I can also learn from his flipflopping is this: he may or may not be a conservative, but he is SURELY more afraid of liberals than he is of us. And that has to change because he's not going anywhere. We're stuck with him.
So, I don't know how you put the political fear of God into a person who has a position for life but we're gonna have to figure out how. Because we now know he's the type of man who crumbles under the threat of being made fun of or being criticized by the liberals.
Apr '11
Re: The Roberts Defection, Confirmed
I wish those sources would some clarification of the logic behind Robert's Switch in Time That Spent Nine...Trillion.
Could this indicate that Kennedy might have the fortitude to put off retirement if - God help us - Obama is reelected?
We know neither Scalia or Thomas are giving up their seats for a socialist - even if they have to be wheeled into the chambers like Jeremy Bentham. If Kennedy knows he is all that stands between him and the judicial anarchy of an Obama dominated court maybe he'd cling on for 2016?
Don't get me wrong, I'll be doing all I can to get Romney elected (I sent in my first donation this weekend). But I won't pretend the odds aren't still stacked against us.
Oct '10
Re: The Roberts Defection, Confirmed
After Roe v. Wade, sanctifying the murder of scores of millions of our children, did ANY respect remain for the Extreme Court? Roberts is in the tradition of Warren and Blackmun. I refuse to indulge the effort required to piss upon their graves, but to feign respect is a position I refuse.
Get used to it, death wears a black robe, and claims social justice as his crusade.
Apr '11
Re: The Roberts Defection, Confirmed
Okay, now I've read the whole article (which paints an even more depressing picture of Roberts than Troy's excerpt above). Typical. Roberts sits in his Beltway mansion reading the NY Times and convinces himself it somehow represent's the views of Americans. Well, Chief, let's see how much influence you have defending the Court's prestige against a 5 or 6 leftist majority who openly loath the document they're sworn to protect. You'll be the most irrelevant Chief Justice in history. F...[preemptively self-censored in respect of the Ricochet COC]
And this type of ignorance is just maddening:
The case raised entirely new issues of power. Never before had Congress tried to force Americans to buy a private product; as a result, never before had the Court ruled Congress lacked that power. It was completely uncharted waters.
Uncharted? That's the whole point of the damned charter!