The Extreme Partisanship of John Roberts's Supreme Court

The Atlantic ^ | August 27, 2014 | Garrett Epps

[right-wing agnostic]

“Politics are closely divided,” John Roberts told scholar Jeffrey Rosen after his first term as chief justice. “The same with the Congress. There ought to be some sense of some stability, if the government is not going to polarize completely. It’s a high priority to keep any kind of partisan divide out of the judiciary as well.”

No one who observes the chief justice would doubt he was sincere in his wish for greater unanimity, greater judicial modesty, a widely respected Supreme Court quietly calling “balls and strikes.” But human beings are capable of wishing for mutually incompatible things—commitment and freedom, for example, or safety and excitement. In his desire for harmony, acclaim, and legitimate hegemony, the chief was fighting himself. As he enters his 10th term, his quest for a non-partisan Court seems in retrospect like the impossible dream.

Related Story

The Twilight of Antonin Scalia The Supreme Court’s 2013 term began with oral argument in a divisive, highly political case about campaign finance and concluded with two 5-4 decisions of divisive, highly political cases, one about public-employee unions and the other about contraceptive coverage under the Affordable Care Act. In all three cases, the result furthered a high-profile objective of the Republican Party. In all three cases, the voting precisely followed the partisan makeup of the Court, with the five Republican appointees voting one way and the four Democratic appointees bitterly dissenting. In all three cases, the chief voted with the hard-right position. By the end of the term, the polarization Roberts had seen in the nation had clearly spread to the Court. In fact, the clerk’s final gavel on June 30 did not signal even a momentary respite from the bitterness.

[right-wing agnostic]

I think the author is way off base here. During the 2013-2014 U.S. Supreme Court term, The Roberts Court achieved an astounding amount of unanimity, with almost two-thirds of there decisions being unanimous. This was achieved through decisions that were often more narrowly tailored than some justices would like in order to achieve unanimity among the justices. The 2013-2014 U.S. Supreme Court term also had the fewest number of 5-4 decisions during John Roberts's tenure as Chief Justice of the United States (since the 2005-2006 U.S. Supreme Court term)

John Roberts has utterly failed in making the U.S. Supreme Court less political during his tenure. He undermined the Court's apolitical stance when he joined the liberal justices and authored the opinion in NFIB v. Sebelius that upheld the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. ObamaCare.) In upholding its constitutionality by declaring it to be a tax, John Roberts effectively rewrote the statute to make it constitutional. In the process he violated his oath by making himself a super legislator and he disregarded the text of the Origination Clause (art.I sec. 7 cl. 1) that says that all bills raising revenue must originate in the House of Representatives. Furthermore, Chief Justice Roberts was the only person in government to argue that ObamaCare was a "tax" instead of a "fee" (like Congress intended.) In trying to avoid the Supreme Court's role in the political process, John Roberts destroyed the U.S. Supreme Court's reputation with a sizable (and growing) percentage of the American people./rwa

[Trapped Behind Enemy Lines]

Wish it were more partisan.

Perhaps Obamacare would have been declare unconstitutional.

Which it is, of course.

[cotton1706]

I guess slightly to the right of Anthony Kennedy is “partisan.”

But when John Paul Stevens and Sandra Day O’Connor and David Souter were on the court, it wasn’t partisan. Oh, no!

[Georgia Girl 2]

Well we all know which side of the divide Roberts is on.

[Steve_Seattle]

Typical liberal “logic” - only the conservatives are being “divisive” and “partisan.”

[nathanbedford]

Mr. Chief Justice, with all your erudition, with every point of your impressive IQ, with all your academic and legal accomplishments, with all your black robes, you are nothing but a fool and a laughing stock.

To believe that the four leftists on the court are anything but partisan is to willfully discount the evidence of your own eyes and that makes you publicly ridiculous. The idea that Ruth Bader Ginsburg or any other of the present female J ustices will ever be anything on any partisan issue except a partisan warrior bending the Constitution and logic to the service of the Left is to engage in willful self-deception.

The charade is drawing to a close, fewer and fewer Americans since the "borking" of Judge Bork have fallen for the deception. The supreme court is no longer an institution which a citizen can trust to exegete our Constitution. It is over!

Kindly spare us your pious mewlings decrying partisanship either in the Congress or on The Court. Rank partisanship has been forced on us by the left and it is not an unfortunate accident of history. We are at war and the enemy is not partisanship but leftism, partisanship is the tactic of the left.

[Trapped Behind Enemy Lines]

precisely.

[GeronL]

How is it partisan?

John Roberts votes with Obama far too much

[Lurking Libertarian]

SCOTUS.

[BenLurkin]

bttt

[BuckeyeTexan]

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