THE BIG SWITCH: JUSTICE ROBERTS

Source: Joel Skousen's World Affairs Brief (http://www.worldaffairsbrief.com)







THE BIG SWITCH: JUSTICE ROBERTS
Perhaps the most important leak to come out of the Supreme Court highlighted the fact that Roberts did, in fact, get turned by someone or something. Paul Campos of Salon.com has part of the story. Mr. Campos is a professor of law at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

“Rumors had been circulating in legal circles for weeks that Chief Justice Roberts in particular was under enormous political pressure not to be the vote that would overturn the most significant piece of social legislation passed by Congress in decades. Indeed, in April President Obama took the unusual step of issuing something of a public warning on the subject, saying that he was ‘confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.’

“It is impossible for a lawyer to read even the first few pages of the dissent without coming away with the impression that this is a majority opinion that at the last moment lost its fifth vote. Its structure and tone are those of a winning coalition, not that of the losing side in the most controversial Supreme Court case in many years. But when we get to Page 13, far more conclusive evidence appears: No less than 15 times in the space of the next few pages, the dissent refers to Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s concurring opinion as ‘Justice Ginsburg’s dissent.’
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