Politico: Conservatives Fear Chief Justice Roberts Moving Left
Sunday, 19 Oct 2014 01:34 PM
By Greg Richter
Conservatives are growing concerned that Chief Justice John Roberts is increasingly siding with liberals on the U.S. Supreme Court, Politico reports.
It all started in 2012, when Roberts sided with the left in a 5-4 ruling that declared Obamacare constitutional.
In that ruling, Roberts was accused of looking for an argument that wasn't even made in court to justify his vote. Roberts cited the government's power to tax, even though the White House had maintained the fine imposed on those who don't get coverage is not a tax.
More recently, Roberts has kept mum as the court blocked Wisconsin's voter ID law and stopped enforcement of parts of Texas' abortion clinic restrictions. Conservative justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito all made public dissents on those cases.
Roberts' court also declined to hear seven cases on gay marriage this month, effectively letting same-sex marriage stand in those states without having the court weigh in on the national debate. Four justices have to agree for a case to be heard, and it is widely believed that Scalia, Thomas and Alito would have voted to hear the cases.
Roberts promised when he was being confirmed to the court to act as an umpire calling "balls and strikes" on the law rather than be an activist.
"I think there are a lot of conservatives who feel like, instead of calling the balls and strikes, he’s kind of ducking when possible," Carrie Severino of the conservative Judicial Crisis Network told Politico.
Conservatives also fear they are seeing a pattern, as they did when justices Sandra Day O’Connor and John Paul Stevens, both appointed as conservatives, slowly moved to the left during their tenures.
"It's about 50-50 that a Republican judge or justice will remain anything like a Republican," Curt Levey of the right-leaning Committee for Justice told Politico.
From Roberts' perspective, he appears to be wanting to avoid any appearance that his court is being affected by the increasingly partisan mood of the country. Has recently made public statements that he doesn't want that partisan divide affecting the court.
"Justice Scalia, I think, was confirmed unanimously. I think Justice [Ruth Bader] Ginsburg was confirmed unanimously. Neither one of them would have a chance today," Roberts said last month. "That doesn’t make any sense. That’s bad for the judiciary."
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Poster Comment:
It's getting bad when you cannot count of the Chief Justice to provide stability in the Supreme Court. ;)