Free Republic

In yesterday's arguments about ObamaCare before the Supreme Court, Chief Justice John Roberts surprised observers by saying almost nothing. But the single question he did ask might well have tipped his hand, writes Jeffrey Toobin at the New Yorker. If Toobin is right, it's a mixture of good and bad news for the White House: Roberts would vote to keep the law in place—but leave the door open for a future president to gut it. Roberts' question came after Solicitor General Donald Verrilli argued that under precedent set in a Chevron case, the Obama administration has the flexibility to...

The Supreme Court’s credibility is at stake in Wednesday’s argument While the Obamacare challenge being argued before the U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday is not an easy case, it does hinge upon an inescapably far-fetched claim—one that, if it prevails, will cause deep, lasting damage to the court’s credibility in the eyes of about half the nation’s population. I suspect Chief Justice John Roberts, Jr., won’t let that happen. The challengers’ central argument in King v. Burwell is that the Affordable Care Act—the signature achievement of the Obama Administration and the most significant social legislation in a generation—must be given an...

The first time the Affordable Care Act came before the Supreme Court, its constitutional foundation under attack, John G. Roberts Jr. was its unlikely savior. In a spectacular display of spot-welding, the chief justice joined fellow conservatives on some points and brought liberals on board for others. Roberts was the only member of the court to endorse the entire jerry-rigged thing, and even he made sure to distance himself from the substance of the law. (“It is,” he wrote, “not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.”) Still, his efforts rescued President Obama’s signature...

At the time of this writing, six “Gruber videos” have been released and “gone viral,” as they say in YouTube land. These are the videos of course, in which “Obamacare architect” Jonathan Gruber lets the cat out of the bag on the process of enacting the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, aka The Greatest Consumer Fraud Perpetrated on the American People, Ever. Of the many Gruber quotes burning up the internet, I was especially struck by this one, to which Charles Krauthammer refers in a recent article: Gruber said, the bill’s authors manipulated the nonpartisan Congressional Budget...

While Thursday’s ruling overturning buffer zones outside abortion clinics pleased pro-life activists, Justice Antonin Scalia thinks it didn’t go far enough. The court unanimously agreed that the Massachusetts law, which barred protesters and counselors from being within 35 feet of abortion clinics, violated the First Amendment, but denied that it unfairly discriminated against abortion opponents. “Today’s opinion carries forward this Court’s practice of giving abortion-rights advocates a pass when it comes to suppressing the free-speech rights of their opponents,” wrote Justice Antonin Scalia, with whom Justices Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas concurred. “There is an entirely separate, abridged edition of...

The Roberts Court certainly seems like a conservative juggernaut. And, yes, from campaign finance to race to religion, it has moved the law dramatically to the right. But Wednesday's Supreme Court decision on cell-phone privacy shows that this isn't the entire story. In a number of significant areas of law, a majority of the Roberts Court will line up behind rulings that are not so much conservative as libertarian, often with a surprisingly progressive bent. That is certainly true of Riley v. California, in which Chief Justice John Roberts, on behalf of his unanimous colleagues, concluded Wednesday that police may...

Sahil KapurMay 19, 2014, 8:13 AM U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder speaks on stage during the annual meeting of the American Bar Association in San Francisco, California August 12, 2013 In a rare move, Attorney General Eric Holder took direct aim at U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts on issues of race during a commencement speech Saturday. "Chief Justice John Roberts has argued that the path to ending racial discrimination is to give less consideration to the issue of race altogether. This presupposes that racial discrimination is at a sufficiently low ebb that it doesn’t need to be actively confronted," Holder...

The chief justice must have "gone off his meds." No, it was blackmail. No, it was cowardice. He caved. It was a perverse abdication of his fundamental responsibility. Those are some of the many disputations that came in to American Thinker regarding my exploration of another possible explanation for why Chief Justice John Roberts chose, astonishingly, to keep the "Affordable Care Act" alive and kicking.("The Roberts Trap Is Sprung", American Thinker, Jan. 2) Of the nearly 680 comments, roughly four out of five were against the thesis I advanced, which is that Roberts ruled as he did because he foresaw...

On Monday, without comment (because he could not make a coherent one), Chief Justice John Roberts denied a request by the Association of American Physicians & Surgeons and the Alliance for Natural Health USA for a stay in the implementation of Obamacare. The groups had made their application last Friday, arguing that since the bill had been declared a tax by the Supreme Court (with Justice Roberts himself the deciding vote), and it had originated in the Senate (the Constitution says revenue bills may not originate), the law was therefore unconstitutional; and implementation of Obamacare should at least be stayed...

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court has refused a group of doctors' request to block implementation of the nation's new health care law. Chief Justice John Roberts turned away without comment Monday an emergency stay request from the Association of American Physicians & Surgeons, Inc. and the Alliance for Natural Health USA.

One of the most overlooked aspects of the year just ended is the vindication of Chief Justice John Roberts -- a vindication that showed up as the national catastrophe known as ObamaCare got rolling. Roberts may have also doomed Hillary Clinton's chance to live in the White House again. The chief justice, an appointee of President George W. Bush and reputedly a constitutionalist in his jurisprudence, set his diabolical trap (diabolical to Democrats) on June 28, 2012, when he joined with the four liberal justices on the Supreme Court to uphold the constitutionality of ObamaCare. Conservatives and Republicans across the...

On Saturday, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will become the first Supreme Court justice to officiate a gay wedding ceremony. She will wed Michael M. Kaiser, president of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and John Roberts (an economist, not her colleague Chief Justice John Roberts, no relation). "I think it will be one more statement that people who love each other and want to live together should be able to enjoy the blessings and the strife in the marriage relationship," Ginsburg said, according to The Washington Post. The wedding will take place at the...

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will become the first Supreme Court member to conduct a same-sex marriage ceremony Saturday when she officiates at the Washington wedding of Kennedy Center President Michael M. Kaiser. The gala wedding of Kaiser and economist John Roberts at the performing arts center brings together the nation’s highest court and the capital’s high society and will mark a new milepost in recognition of same-sex unions. Such marriages were virtually unheard of a little more than a decade ago but now are legal in the nation’s capital, 13 states and in all or part of 17 other countries....

Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) recently wrote a book, "Why John Roberts Was Wrong About Healthcare", which is an excellent and compelling read. Besides providing a gripping argument as to why Justice Roberts was wrong on the ObamaCare ruling, Lee also gives an excellent history and background on the Court and the health care decision itself. American Thinker had the privilege of interviewing the Senator about his book and ObamaCare. His two main arguments in the book point out how ObamaCare has made federalism extravagant and that there appears to no longer be a separation of power among branches. Senator Lee...

Chief Justice John Roberts has done it again. His twisted reasoning in last year’s Obamacare ruling wasn’t the only unpleasant surprise he’s sprung on supporters of the rule of law. His majority 5-to-4 opinion in California’s Proposition 8 case — throwing the issue back to California because plaintiffs lacked standing to argue in his court — is as bizarre as his Obamacare decision. His opinion was joined by an ideological tossed salad of justices that ranged from Ruth Bader Ginsburg to Antonin Scalia. But the fact that its list of supporters is unusual doesn’t mean it won’t present real problems...

SNIP But that’s not how they came out. The liberal wing of the Court plus Kennedy struck down DOMA, with Roberts dissenting on the issue of standing to sue. Then the Court punted on Prop 8, holding that the plaintiffs (hey, they weren’t a gay couple) didn’t have standing. On the standing issue Kennedy and Roberts were consistent. Kennedy didn’t see a standing problem in either case, Roberts did. Both cases were 5-4. I don’t have the second case in front of me but here’s what I think explains what happened. The liberal wing, voting strategically, didn’t see a standing...

EXCERPT Lee’s argument is not based on the NSA or its monitoring of the nation’s communication. Rather, Lee said, there are indications that Roberts originally intended to vote against the act, but that a public “campaign of intimidation” made him change his mind. First, the senator claimed “the opinion was written in a way to suggest he switched his vote,” and that the dissenting opinion reads like it was originally written as the majority. He added that several news outlets reported that Roberts did change his vote, based on insider information. Not only that, he said, but the court performed...

During their discussion, Mr. Beck raised an intriguing possibility: Was Chief Justice John Roberts blackmailed by the Obama regime into changing his ruling on Obamacare at the last minute? Given what he knows about the NSA, Mr. Binney couldn't rule such a thing out.

The Obama Administration’s argument failed to persuade anyone. The only thing the high court seemed to agree unanimously on was that no one considered the Obama Administration’s stance on the issue convincing. The administration’s brief calls “for the nullification of the gay marriage bans now in place in California and the seven other states that forbid gay marriage while allowing civil unions.” Essentially this position asserts that for those states which allow civil unions they will be forced to grant full marriage. It takes no position on states that have no benefits for same-sex couples. Several Justices vehemently challenged the...

Even though Obamacare was decided months ago, pundits are still dissecting the court's actions. CNN's top legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin and famed lawyer and author Alan Dershowitz sat down on Friday at New York's 92nd Street Y to debate why Chief Justice John Roberts used his deciding vote to pass President Barack Obama's controversial health care law. And, according to Dershowitz, Roberts did it just so he could side with Republicans from now on without getting called out for being too conservative. "Roberts is very political," Dershowitz said in the interview, posted by Above The Law. "And what he did...