28 Jun 2012

Was Roberts Successfully Pressured?

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Chief Justice Roberts hurrying off to write his decision.

Looks like. David Bernstein, at Volokh, shares evidence that Chief Justice Roberts switched his vote and the majority on the Court changed.

Scalia’s dissent, at least on first quick perusal, reads like it was originally written as a majority opinion … (in particular, he consistently refers to Justice Ginsburg’s opinion as “The Dissent”). Back in May, there were rumors floating around relevant legal circles that a key vote was taking place, and that Roberts was feeling tremendous pressure from unidentified circles to vote to uphold the mandate. Did Roberts originally vote to invalidate the mandate on commerce clause grounds, and to invalidate the Medicaid expansion, and then decide later to accept the tax argument and essentially rewrite the Medicaid expansion (which, as I noted, citing Jonathan Cohn, was the sleeper issue in this case) to preserve it? If so, was he responding to the heat from President Obama and others, preemptively threatening to delegitimize the Court if it invalidated the ACA?

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Michael Lawler

Roberts has twice this week proven himself a weak-kneed, spaghetti-spined sob sister more concerned with not offending the East coast elite than with rationally interpreting the Constitution. His decision on The Affordable Care Act puts the lit match to the gasoline Obama has poured on the Constitution.



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