Free Republic

This week, the president announced his intention to nominate John Roberts to be a Supreme Court justice. His nomination has been met with widespread praise, from left and right. Nevertheless, there are some who have raised complaints that his two years on the bench provide insufficient record for them to assess (and attack) his jurisprudence. That complaint misses the mark for three reasons.

"As an individual, John Roberts is undoubtedly a principled conservative, as is the president who appointed him. He clerked for Chief Justice Rehnquist, worked in the Reagan White House, and served as the principal deputy solicitor general in President George H.W. Bush's Justice Department. As a jurist, Judge Roberts' approach will be that of his entire career: carefully, faithfully applying the Constitution and legal precedent. He is a mainstream judge, respected across the ideological spectrum. Thus, he's earned praise from liberal icons such as Harvard Law Professor Larry Tribe, and Chicago Law Professor Cass Sunstein, as well as from Clinton...

Chief Justice John Roberts is "disgraceful'' and a "disappointment'' to conservatives, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said Saturday, while praising Associate Justice Clarence Thomas as his favorite member of the U.S. Supreme Court. "Justice Roberts really let us down. What he did with Obamacare was disgraceful, and I think he did that because he wanted to be popular inside the Beltway,'' Trump told about 4,000 supporters. The celebrity billionaire was referring to the chief justice's two votes to uphold key provisions of President Barack Obama's 2010 health care law and to the expressway around the District of Columbia, an area...

AIKEN, S.C. — Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts is "disgraceful" and a "disappointment" to conservatives, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said Saturday, while praising Associate Justice Clarence Thomas as his favorite member of the high court. "Justice Roberts really let us down. What he did with Obamacare was disgraceful, and I think he did that because he wanted to be popular inside the Beltway," Trump told about 4,000 supporters.

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts is "disgraceful" and a "disappointment" to conservatives, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said Saturday, while praising Associate Justice Clarence Thomas is his favorite member of the high court. "Justice Roberts really let us down. What he did with Obamacare was disgraceful, and I think he did that because he wanted to be popular inside the Beltway," Trump told about 4,000 supporters. The celebrity billionaire was referring to the chief justice twice voting to uphold key provisions of President Barack Obama's 2010 health care law and to the expressway around the District of Columbia, an...

War Is On The Horizon: Is It Too Late To Stop It? Paul Craig Roberts One lesson from military history is that once mobilization for war begins, it takes on a momentum of its own and is uncontrollable. This might be what is occuring unrecognized before our eyes. In his September 28 speech at the 70th Anniversity of the United Nations, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that Russia can no longer tolerate the state of affairs in the world. Two days later at the invitation of the Syrian government Russia began war against ISIS. Russia was quickly successful in destroying...

The U.S. Supreme Court appears on track to revisit the constitutionality of the death penalty, with recent remarks from justices and world leaders sparking fresh optimism from opponents of capital punishment. The high court under Chief Justice John Roberts has in recent terms agreed to rule on cases related to how states handle death penalty prosecutions and conduct executions, but has yet to weigh in on whether the practice violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.  Some court watchers say that will soon change, pointing to signals suggesting an appetite among some of the justices to...

Did Bush go down the Justice Roberts is compromised path, before back tracking? I think he let the cat out of the bag.

Are key Republican leaders in D.C. from the Senate, House and Supreme Court being blackmailed? Tell me you haven’t thought the exact same thing? Something is very wrong. Something smells rotten in DC. Rotten like a dead fish left at the front door of a Congressmen’s office by the Obama Crime Family. Rotten like a photo of a Supreme Court Justice with his robe down at his ankles. Because what’s happening just isn’t normal. Please tell me how it’s possible that President Obama and his socialist cabal suffered the most massive and historic defeat in modern political history only 9...

SKOTUS and The Chief Kangaroo Chief Kangaroo John Roberts, with his tortured opinion in King v. Burwell, has literally turned the high court into “a mock court in which the principles of law and justice are disregarded or perverted,” as Merriam-Webster defines “kangaroo court.” Should the high court now be called SKOTUS - Supreme Kangaroos of the United States? In his second major ruling on the Affordable Care Act – “Obamacare” – Roberts has once again seemingly succumbed to White House pressure to uphold the law, given his obvious legal gymnastics in finding a way, any way, to justify the...

Obama takes his new dog "Roberts" out for a walkBarack Obama has decided to run for a third term (at least) as President of the United States. President Obama is beginning the process to amend the Constitution to allow him to run for a third term. WWN learned that the White House and President Obama’s campaign machine have a “foolproof” plan for the President to successfully achieve a third (and perhaps a fourth) term in office. At one time Obama planned to amend the Constitution: “President Obama only faces opposition in the House,” a White House insider told WWN....

A day after Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts sided squarely with the Obama administration on the health care overhaul, the same jurist came out swinging against the court´s ruling legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide. In his dissenting opinion -- which he read from the bench for the first time in his nearly 10 years as chief justice -- Roberts charged Friday that the court had no right to intervene in what should be a democratic debate by the people, at the state level, over same-sex marriage. "This court is not a legislature," he wrote. "Whether same-sex marriage is a good...

Andrew Napolitano reacts to John Roberts' comments on Supreme Court Rulings.

The Chief Justice again rewrites ObamaCare in order to save it.For the second time in three years, Chief Justice John Roberts has rewritten the Affordable Care Act in order to save it. Beyond its implications for health care, the Court’s 6-3 ruling in King v. Burwell is a landmark that betrays the Chief’s vow to be “an umpire,” not a legislator in robes. He stands revealed as a most political Justice. The black-letter language of ObamaCare limits insurance subsidies to “an Exchange established by the State.” But the Democrats who wrote the bill in 2010 never imagined that 36 states...

The logic of the Supreme Court ruling upholding the latest challenge to Obamacare is simple: “Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not destroy them,” writes Chief Justice John Roberts in his 6-3 majority decision in the case of King v. Burwell. “If at all possible, we must interpret the Act in a way that is consistent with the former, and avoids the latter.” This is obviously true — and patently ridiculous. It’s true because of course the goal was to improve markets. It’s absurd because government policies often have the opposite effect of what is...

The Supreme Court had an opportunity, with its ruling in King v. Burwell, to determine whether the United States is a nation of laws or of men. Today, in a 6-3 decision, the Court ruled that we have devolved into the latter. Although the text of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare) clearly states that the government may issue subsidies only through insurance exchanges established by the states, Obama administration bureaucrats unilaterally rewrote that part of the law so that the IRS could dispense such premium assistance through “marketplaces” created by the federal government. The plaintiffs in...

While Chief Justice John Roberts delivered a blow to ObamaCare foes with a majority opinion upholding subsidies, he backed up the law's opponents on one point: The language in the Affordable Care Act was kind of a mess. "The Affordable Care Act contains more than a few examples of inartful drafting," he wrote.

Is the idea implausible that this same Obama administration that orders IRS attacks, then orders destruction of key evidence, would stop at nothing to save Obama’s signature achievement? Is it impossible to believe that Obama and his socialist cabal that learned from Saul Alinsky that “the ends justify the means” would hold something over a Supreme Court justice’s head? It’s time to ask the question loudly and boldly because something is clearly wrong in Washington, D.C. Is that the purpose of government agencies like the IRS and the NSA that are abusing our rights – to listen to us, to...

On Thursday, the Supreme Court delivered another major victory to ObamaCare, voting 6-3 in King v. Burwell to uphold the subsidies at the heart of the sweeping health care reform law. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts — appointed by George W. Bush, and once a beloved figure on the right — wrote the majority opinion, joined by the court's liberal wing and swing Justice Anthony Kennedy. This isn't the first time Roberts has sided with the left on ObamaCare. And as a result, my fellow conservatives are comparing Roberts quite ignominiously to David Souter.

I​n a blistering dissent from the majority in King v. Burwell this morning, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said President Obama’s signature domestic policy achievement should be called “SCOTUScare” rather than Obamacare, in light of how many times Chief Justice John Roberts has intervened to protect the law from a crippling legal defeat. Scalia argued that Roberts rewrote the law twice in 2012, and has now done so a third time in his King decision, which allows the IRS to continue providing subsidies to people who purchase insurance in the federal government’s health-care exchange. “The somersaults of statutory interpretation they...