There’s a basic flaw within your very appealing theory: if Roberts decision was made to allow the other Constitutional arguments against ObamaCare to advance ( this allowing further precedents on the CC to be locked in) then he’s going to do even MORE damage to the Court’s precious reputation.
Speculation is that Roberts decided as he did to avoid the perception that the Court has become partisan. In this he failed, just that Conservatives now see it as partisan, with Roberts having flipped to the Liberal/Dem side.
Imagine the reaction from the Left if, next term, their newfound hero votes with a majority to overturn Obamacare on different grounds ... The story will be that a weak Chief Justice caved to Conservative outcry. THAT only does more damage to the destruction alreade wrought.
“Speculation is that Roberts decided as he did to avoid the perception that the Court has become partisan. In this he failed, just that Conservatives now see it as partisan, with Roberts having flipped to the Liberal/Dem side.”
Yes, but I think we all know that conservatives don’t count. Leftists dominate academia and the legal industry, and therefore control “mainstream” legal opinion. They also dominate the beltway, as if I have to tell you, where Roberts works. The chief justice was interested not in the general public’s perceptions but in political correctness.
Remember in this thread, we’re discussing the possibility that Roberts ruled as he did not to save the SCOTUS’s reputation, but as a sort of rope-a-dope move against the left. If that’s the case, my theory holds.
It also holds if Roberts is actually a strict constructivist and simply conscientiously decided that the objection to the mandate was unsustainable because the “penalty” has the form of an income tax (with minimum and maximum amounts) waived on persons engaging in certain behavior and post-Sixteenth Amendment Congress can levy such taxes (and waive them in exchange for certain behavior — think ‘tax deduction’, ‘tax credit’).
Sure the “story” will be that Roberts caved to conservative pressure. So what? The “story” now is that he caved to leftist pressure (at least around these parts).