Roberts wrote both obamacare opinions
This weekend CBS News Jan Crawford reported that Chief Justice John Roberts switched his vote in regard to upholding the bulk of the Affordable Care Act. Crawford reports that Roberts voted with the rest of the courts conservatives to strike down the individual mandate, but in the course of drafting his opinion changed his mind, and ended up siding with the courts four liberals to uphold almost all of the law.
In response, according to Crawfords story, the four conservatives then independently crafted a highly unusual joint dissent. If so, this would represent a powerful symbolic gesture: Joint Supreme Court opinions are rare. Normally a justice authors an individual opinion, which other justices may choose to join. Jointly authored opinions are reserved for momentous statements of principle, such as in Cooper v. Aaron, when all nine justices jointly authored an opinion declaring that the courts anti-segregation decisions were binding on state governments that disagreed with the courts constitutional interpretations.
Its notable that Crawfords sources insist on the claim that the joint dissent was authored specifically in response to Roberts majority opinion, without any participation from him at any point in the drafting process that created it. It would, after all, be fairly preposterous for the four dissenters to jointly author an opinion that was in large part written originally by the author of the majority opinion to which the joint dissenters were now so flamboyantly objecting.
Yet that, I am told by a source within the court with direct knowledge of the drafting process, is exactly what happened. My source insists that most of the material in the first three quarters of the joint dissent was drafted in Chief Justice Roberts chambers in April and May. Only the last portion of what eventually became the joint dissent was drafted without any participation by the chief justice.
the remaining story: http://www.salon.com/2012/07/03/roberts_wrote_both_obamacare_opinions/
LP: I guess this was the ultimate flip flop which of his sides one
elleng
(131,247 posts)rocktivity
(44,582 posts)might be the conservative justices themselves.
rocktivity
Life Long Dem
(8,582 posts)Wouldn't this settle everything? Or is that too easy?