Posted on 07/12/2012 5:26:36 AM PDT by Sir Napsalot
(nip) I doubt there was a single reason for the chief justice’s evolution (I know, conservatives hate that word in the context of Supreme Court justices’ ideological trajectories), but let me suggest one: the breathtaking radicalism of the other four conservative justices. The opinion pointedly signed individually by Justices Kennedy, Thomas, Antonin Scalia and Samuel A. Alito Jr. would have invalidated the entire Affordable Care Act, finding no one part of it severable from the rest. This astonishing act of judicial activism has received insufficient attention, because it ultimately didn’t happen, but it surely got the chief justice’s attention as a warning that his ostensible allies were about to drive the Supreme Court over the cliff and into the abyss. (Extraneous question: Is the liberal love affair with Anthony Kennedy — which should have ended five years ago with his preposterously patronizing opinion in Gonzales v. Carhart, upholding the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 and suggesting that women are incapable of acting in their own best interests — finally over?)
Students of the court more interested in seeking to understand rather than denounce the chief justice’s performance have offered valuable insights in recent days. Steven M. Teles, a political scientist at Johns Hopkins University and author of the commendable “The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement,” suggested in The Washington Monthly that Chief Justice Roberts was not comfortable with “sweeping uses of judicial power to limit government.” Professor Teles said that while the chief justice was “sympathetic” with his fellow conservatives, he “simply lacks the taste for the jugular that they have, either as a result of his role as chief justice or his prudential sense of how far it is reasonable for the court to go in using its power.” .....
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com ...
I think the SC needs a mandated one-week sabattical where they do nothing but read the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the contemporary writings of the Framers. They were quite clear on their reasoning, intentions, and choices.
IMHO, the SC get caught up in 200+ years of legal poppycock and have forgotten the whole point of this experiment.
Thanks for the heads up on that. I read the King James version, would you suggest any other version?
Walter Williams has said that, when considering a candidate for the Supremes, he/she should be given a reading comprehension test.
The specific materials comprising this test would be the Constitution.
Areed.
With all the intellectual curiosity and integrity Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, Gingsburg, and Breyer combined, they have shown themselves no better than the potted plant in the background.
>>> A Harvard law student, Joel Alicea, in a smart post on the conservative Web site The Public Discourse, wrote that the health care decision revealed “a clash between two visions of judicial restraint and two eras of the conservative legal movement.” If Chief Justice Roberts, nearly a generation younger than Justices Scalia and Kennedy, in fact represents the old form of legal conservatism, in which the judicial role is to salvage statutes if possible rather than eviscerate them in the service of a bigger agenda, that’s a fascinating and highly consequential development. <<<
>>> So the real question is what the word “conservative” means in 2012 and the decades ahead. <<<
IOW, CJ Roberts represents today's conservative justices. Kennedy, Scalia, et al. belong to the quaint ‘Older Generation’. Justice Alito aside, if this is the trend, we may soon lose the true Republic's form.
“The Mystery of John Roberts”
I don’t believe there was much “mystery” behind what happened.
Roberts originally sided with the conservatives. He may even have written a good portion of [what later became] the minority opinion - and this is why the minority opinion was left “unsigned”.
Then the attacks from the administration and the left began — attacks on the Court in general (this was obvious), and perhaps on Roberts personally (this would have happened covertly).
Roberts didn’t have the backbone to withstand them. Ostensibly, he was reported to be concerned “about the Court’s reputation” (if he voted to toss out ObamaCare), but I sense he was far more concerned, and intimidated, by something in his personal life that he believed would be best kept under wraps.
And so, he reversed himself, offering as the reason legalese in an effort to justify personal actions.
But by doing so, he has demonstrated to the left (and the Chicago-style mob) that he can be “rolled”. If he changed his vote to cover up something this time, he leaves himself ripe for intimidation in future decisions.
My opinion only. I’m probably completely wrong about this.
But that’s how I see it....
Oh I think there is a Big Mystery.
Speculation is that John Roberts is full blown homosexual with a beard wife and was threatened with an outting if he didn`t join the progressive dark side.
Why else work for free for gay “rights” !? :
Judge John G. Roberts Jr., the Supreme Court nominee, gave advice to advocates for gay rights a decade ago, helping them win a landmark 1996 ruling protecting gay men and lesbians...But they said he did provide invaluable strategic guidance working pro bono to formulate legal theories and coach them in moot court sessions. ... The 1996 case, Romer v. Evans, is considered a touchstone in the culture wars
NYTimes
Ditto!
King James is the version I read. The other versions say close to the same thing on this verse.
Posting the King James version.
James 1:8 A double minded man [is] unstable in all his ways.
And just exactly how do you know it wasn’t Bush who did the wool pulling? Leftward Ho seems to be our creed.
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