In reading the coverage of the SCOTUS decision on the ACA, my thought was that Chief Justice Roberts was making a political decision toward his legacy — ruling not so much as he feels is jurisprudentially justified, as how he wants his tenure to be known.
But there may be some fiendishly clever aspects to the ruling as well — ones that will come back to haunt the folks (such as myself) applauding it.
"By voting with the liberals to uphold the Affordable Care Act, Roberts has put himself above partisan reproach. No one can accuse Roberts of ruling as a movement conservative. He’s made himself bulletproof against insinuations that he’s animated by party allegiances.
But by voting with the conservatives on every major legal question before the court, he nevertheless furthered the major conservative projects before the court — namely, imposing limits on federal power. And by securing his own reputation for impartiality, he made his own advocacy in those areas much more effective. If, in the future, Roberts leads the court in cases that more radically constrain the federal government’s power to regulate interstate commerce, today’s decision will help insulate him from criticism. And he did it while rendering a decision that Democrats are applauding.
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The political genius of John Roberts
The political genius of John Roberts
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That's true about the legacy part, but do Supreme Court Justices need to worry about criticism? Since 'in good behaviour' has been translated to 'serve for life', it seems to me that they have no fear of political reproach from anyone….ever.
Or it could be that he legitimately believed the health care act wasn't unconstitutional. The taxation powers argument is pretty persuasive.
+Travis Cobb , the criticism is part of the legacy (and is the present foundation of it). While he doesn't have to worry about being voted out of office for anything other than the most egregious of scandals, I think he wants to be seen as a memorable and historically important Chief Justice, and part of that is not being seen as a partisan hack.
+Kit Malone , I agree the argument is persuasive (I made a similar argument a ways back). But the surrounding attack on the Commerce Clause — the foundation of a lot of other programs Congress has passed since the 60s — heck, since the 1900s — is also noteworthy.
Deleted my comment, which was a bit unfair. The point is that I don't think that the decision had anything to do with deflecting claims of partisan behavior. If that had ever mattered, it would have been done long ago.
I think its an interesting decision. The article analyzes it from the means used to achieve the end, and sees a limitation on government power. I disagree. I think what Roberts did in tying the decision to the government's power to tax was to also affirm the government's ability to coerce individuals to patronize corporations. The power to tax has historically been one of the most inviolate powers of government. Thus, anything justified by the federal government's power to tax actually increases in strength.
One could therefore, if they wished to view this in a very cynical way, look at this as the best possible result for Republicans. It galvanizes their base by upholding the object of their ire. It fans the flames by calling it a tax. And, if you assume the Republicans are already the party of corperations and can buy their elections, it gives them the almost explicit power to compel people to buy those corporate products.
I'm not so cynical about it though. I think that, in this case, Roberts was just calling it like he saw it.
I tend to agree that his decision was (in part), made to influence the historical view of the Court. Individual justices are occasionally remembered, but it's the Chief Justice that is most cited, (i.e. the Roberts Court ruled ………..).
So, the man has consistently said since his confirmation hearings he views the court's role as being an umpire interpreting the "rule book" of the constitution and not to push forward policy. In that spirit, he explicitly said he was attempting to remove his personal feelings on the policy enshrined in the law from the decision and was trying to find a way to allow the legislative branch to apply its chosen policy if the law they cobble together from the perspectives of competing coalitions could be shoehorned into a constitutional framework. And yet you can't take him at his word? You still insist on seeing some nefarious and sinister Master Plan to take a tactical defeat on behalf of some shadow, evil Puppet Masters of the Right in order to strike a more decisive blow at some vague later time?
Lets recall that the "individual mandate" was originally an idea championed by Right leaning think tanks as a counter to the Clinton Single Payer approach — a way to enable a Free Market solution to the issues of coverage. So, he was certainly aware of solid arguments supported at least at one time by those on the Right for this type of solution, the recent hysteria on the Right because it was in this version put forward by the Democrats notwithstanding.
In my application of Occam's Razor, I'd see:
A) A man is acting on his long and consistently stated principle that the Judiciary should rule that a law is constitutional if at all possible in order to allow the Legislature to apply its chosen policy, its main role; a rejection of an "Activist" Judiciary either from a Left of Right perspective.
B) The multi-tentacled, vastly complicated sinister tactical defeat in the service of some scheme to provide cover for a later, at this point undefined, decisive blow to political opponents?
In a way I agree with your view that this reflects a principle that may haunt in other decisions: my first thought was about possible decisions on personal liberties. If there can be a way found to allow the Executive wide latitude … well, I shudder at those possibilities. This kind of application of principle can certainly cut both ways and be still consistent application of the principle.
Interesting perspective, +The Bruce, Mile High — I think if Roberts had been more consistent in his actions regarding ruling on balls/strikes, vs. leading the court to much broader and disruptive decisions of an arguably partisan nature, people would be a lot less willing to question his verbalized judicial philosophy.
I don't agree with +Gary Roth that this is part of a conservative move to justify compulsion of buying Corporation XYZ's products. I do think that the rejection of the Commerce Clause as a justification, though, was quite intentional, and may well have a greater long-term influence downstream.
One observation I'd make is that the debate in this case was over means, not end. While the commerce clause (government can mandate insurance purchase because it controls interstate commerce) was rejected as a justification of means, the power to tax (government can mandate insurance purchase because the fine to not to do is actually a tax, even though there's no enforcement mechanism) was ruled a justifiable means. But the fundamental end of health care coverage reform — that society, and thus government, have a legitimate and constitutional purpose in seeing that people have access to needed health care — was not challenged (or didn't make it to SCOTUS in this case).
That's not just what Roberts characterized as a political preference by the population — that seems huge to me.
+Dave Hill I said, "I'm not so cynical about it though. I think that, in this case, Roberts was just calling it like he saw it."
In other words, while I provided for a sinister possibility, I don't think that possibility is actually true.
Sorry, +Gary Roth, you are correct, I mischaracterized your conclusion.