Did Justice Roberts Switch his Vote Late in the Game?

Intrade ^ | June 29, 2012 | various

[Kevmo]

NedStark wrote: http://www.volokh.com/2012/06/28/was-scalias-dissent-originally-a-majority-opinion/

"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? The dissent, along with the surprising way that Roberts chose to uphold both the mandate and the Medicaid expansion, will inevitably feed the rumor mill."

I still believe that it is likely that there was insider trading that drove the price of this contract from $7-$9 in the past month. However, in the two days before the decision the price fell on substantial volume.

If the suspicions about Roberts changing his vote at the last minute are true then this only reinforces the intrade's value as a predictive market even though this time the bettors 'got it wrong.'

Edit to add here is an article that makes it clear that Roberts switched sides after the opinions had been written:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/06/29/did-rob...t-was-initially-set-to-strike/ This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at June 29, 2012 19:09:38 UTC

[ZULU]

Bader-Ginsburg is impeachable for making statements about deferring to foreign courts. The others just differ from us ideologically and probably can’t be touched.

[tell me]

I thought the same thing after Roberts sided with the Left on both the Arizona ruling and Obamacare. I thought someone has blackmailed him. He seemed too much of an originalist to switch sides so radically without outside pressure.