Justice Roberts wrote both the majority opinion and the dissent in Sebelius?
The SCOTUS leaks are coming—to coin a phrase—fast and furious. The other day we heard through CBS’s Jan Crawford that two highly-placed anonymous sources described Umpire Roberts’ late innings mind change on Obamacare, and that rumors that Roberts wrote the dissent are false.
Today’s leak is to Salon‘s Paul Campos, who claims that he’s got a source that says Roberts wrote 3/4 of the dissent.
So there.
Well, I’ve got a source who says Chief Justice Roberts is also a time-traveler who wrote the Gettysburg Address and the works of Shakespeare.
So, what’s up with all this leaking? It’s just another one of the very unusual things about this case.
[ADDENDUM: Ace has some theories.]
Althouse thinks it’s various egos. Both sides are hurt- the dissent because he abandoned them and the majority liberals because they want the credit for upholding the Holy Grail of Progressive Programs.
Who freakin’ cares? The Ruling is the Ruling, and nothing else matters, as Neo points out. Maybe we are becoming amateur, speculative neoKremlinologists, but it does not matter how or why it happened. It now IS.
The Ruling shows beyond a shadow of my doubt that no nine totally secure persons should have the power to issue edicts that affect the lives of 300 million of us, whether for good or for ill.
One thing is for sure – that dissent, while excellent, is very odd. Granted, I’ve only studied the “bigger” cases throughout the Court’s history, but I have never seen a dissent that looks like it was authored by three different Justices (Roberts, Kennedy, and Scalia), that completely neglects the majority opinion, that is really a partial concurrence but formally a 100% dissent, and, in essence, that reads like a majority opinion.
Besides all of that, it’s just weird. I don’t mean “bad” (I agree with more or less every word of it); it’s just that – I don’t know how to put this – the whole situation is kind of surreal, disorienting. The actual decision is surreal in its polymorphic perversity; the confident and openly stated statist absolutism of Ginsburg and her fellow “moderate liberals” (as the NY Times surreally refers to them) is surreal; the jelly-spined cowardice of the Chief Justice bumbling around between one opinion and another, ultimately capitulating to the Hamptons set, is surreal –
– and then the dissent meanders into that context and, I suppose, cannot fail to have a weird feel as well.
This is just a feeling, thus subjective, but I’m fairly sure I’ve never such an “Orwellian” experience reading a Supreme Court opinion, not even the worst of them such as Roe, Casey, Bakke, and Mass. v. EPA. The only comparison I can think of, in terms of giving off an extremely intense and creepy Orwellian vibe, is Dred Scott.
I’m not speaking figuratively when I talk about “feeling” here – I felt nauseous for at least a day after reading through the opinions; I felt like I was in some Sartrean nightmare, staring at the worm of non-being now uncoiling within the heart of the Constitution.
And then when I see that Sphinx-like, though somehow insecure, grin on Roberts’ face it gives me the willies, like the grin of a friend before he knifes you in the back.
It’s hard to come to terms with all of it. It’s bad when official events in a republic obtain proportions and dimensions that are hard to get a grip on, that one requires Orwell and Kafka to penetrate rather than plain-old civic thinking.
“Who freakin’ cares?”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQ5ICXMC4xY
Exactly. Stop whining over spilt milk. Its time to clean up the mess and start over.
“I felt like I was in some Sartrean nightmare, staring at the worm of non-being now uncoiling within the heart of the Constitution.”
Its been going on ever since the Whiskey Rebellion and the Alien and Sedition Acts. I reckon the anti-federalists had it right way back when. A penalty/tax for not engaging in commerce is the logical conclusion that leads to the concept that DC rules rough shod over all. The 9th & 10th, long ignored, have been pronounced null and void.
We are now at the great divide. To the right there is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. To the left there is repression via the nanny state.
By all means let’s continue paying lots of attention to Paul Campos, Colorado’s answer to a more eastern Paul, the semi-sentient Paul Krugman. After all, his tireless production of drivel did for the Rocky Mountain News what Krugman’s self-satisfied dreck is doing to the New York Times.
When you stab a colleague in the back you should not be surprised if someone pisses in your Cheerios. The leaks will continue.
So, Kolnai, when confusion reigns, who is the father of it? From a catholic (universal) view?
Unanimous sources don’t count. If they won’t give their names, their words mean nothing.
Whoops, I meant anonymous not unanimous. Heh! The Supreme Court is never unanimous, but given the simplicity of the constitution, it should be.
parker Says:
July 4th, 2012 at 3:38 am
FIFY.
Steve D. Says:
July 4th, 2012 at 10:43 pm
“Unanimous sources don’t count. If they won’t give their names, their words mean nothing.”
I figured it was bs as soon as I saw ‘salon’.
Thanks rickl, you & Curtis are my mentors.
Roberts was born in Buffalo, New York, on January 27, 1955
The son of Rosemary (née Podrasky) and John Glover “Jack” Roberts, Sr.
He attended Harvard College, graduating with an A.B. summa cum laude in history in three years.
He then attended Harvard Law School where he was the managing editor of the Harvard Law Review.
As part of Hogan & Hartson’s pro bono work, he worked behind the scenes for gay rights advocates, reviewing filings and preparing arguments for the Supreme Court case Romer v. Evans (1996), which has been described as “the movement’s most important legal victory”
Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620 (1996), is a landmark United States Supreme Court case dealing with civil rights and state laws. It was the first Supreme Court case to deal with LGBT rights since Bowers v. Hardwick (1986), when the Court had ruled that a law criminalizing homosexual sex was constitutional.
Bottom line, the “protected classes” or Volk, are legally unequal before the law, and are more equal than the unprotected (oppressor) classes. (this sets the stage in the health care law to make it legal to redistribute or have care that favors volk over the unprotected classes, as in Acton T4…
at its root its also the precident that says its ok to disenfranchise the unprotected classes by asserting special status is ok for reasons of protection. ie. a landlord or organization is forbidden from removing or not allowing such a class presence.
so feminists can be in male locker rooms
but the oppressor class, has no right to womens lockers (for the same reasons)
and women, minorities and gays get huge pluses from SBA, that the unprotected classes dont have.
law favors the protected classes, the volk..
from family court, to even sentencing for felonies
aint it an interesting world…
This is as good a place as any to get on the record that I like Roberts’ opinion.
Take that with the proviso that I haven’t found time to read it myself, nor I have even read much punditry about it. Most of what I hear comes from both ends of my radio dial.
If accurate/true, I don‘t mind the notion that the Court should look for a way to uphold legislation as opposed to being charged with finding a way to invalidate legislation. The Court isn’t supposed to be the last and final defender of the Constitution.
The left end of my radio has a valid point that requiring citizens to engage in commerce is not unprecedented. They use an example of requiring men to provide themselves with muskets and ammo. The ACA is monstrous, but the insurance mandate is only a difference in degree, not in kind.
All the cutesy pics I see on the Facebook about the gov’t forcing people to buy tofu or Chevy Volts miss the mark for me. Yes, there is a Constitutional means for that to happen. Roberts has made it plain, and now we are coming to understand that the limits on Federal power must be exercised by all people and all electeds and all State gov’ts at all times. I applaud that realization.
We have let our electeds abdicate their power to the Court for far too long. It’s a big part of how we got to our imminent collapse. A simple overturning would have been politics as usual. From what little I know, this decision was refreshingly anti-political. Instead of legislating from the bench, The Supremes kicked power back to where it belongs, with us.
Pingback:Is Obama trying to sway SCOTUS? - Freedom's Floodgates
Pingback:SCOTUS | King v. Burwell | Obamacare | Obama | influence