Dahlia Lithwick: Is John Roberts Moving to the Left?

[babylonsister]

Is John Roberts Moving to the Left?
Or is he just playing the long game?
By Dahlia Lithwick
July 06, 2020
3:45 PM


On the most recent episode of Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick welcomed the New Yorker’s Jeffrey Toobin and NYU School of Law professor Melissa Murray to discuss last week’s big abortion decision, June Medical Services LLC v. Russo, in which Chief Justice John Roberts chose to strike down Louisiana’s restrictive abortion law. Murray and Toobin debate what this means for Roberts’ jurisprudence and whether he’s moving to the left. Read a portion of their conversation, which has been edited and condensed for clarity, below.

Dahlia Lithwick: In June Medical, Roberts was not willing to make a judgment about whether Louisiana’s abortion law was pretextual. His problem with Louisiana was hutzpah—that the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and Louisiana were overturning 2016’s Whole Woman’s Health and that’s not appropriate, right?

Jeffrey Toobin: John Roberts could have voted either way. When they took June Medical, why would you take the exact same case four years later, other than to reverse it? That was my thinking. So I was surprised by the outcome. John Roberts, for the first time in his 15 years on the Supreme Court, said, State, you can’t do this to stop women from having abortions. And that, to me was, mind-blowing. I think of John Roberts as a dedicated pro-life justice, and he didn’t vote in the pro-life position. If he wanted to approve regulations on abortion, he could have voted to affirm the 5th Circuit. And he didn’t. And that to me was bigger than the terms he used in his opinion.

You’re right that you can’t separate this from his defection on DACA and his defection on Title VII. It’s clear that this is not the chief justice that we saw even this time last year.

Toobin: All of us who cover the court are always asked, Well, what do they really think? And what’s going on? And the honest answer is, Who the hell knows? I don’t know. I have no access to John Roberts’ inner most life. But here you have three enormously consequential cases. Oftentimes we talk about these cases in abstractions. These three cases have a huge impact on people’s lives. It is now illegal in the entire United States to fire gay people just because they’re gay. That’s wasn’t true a month ago. Seven hundred thousand Dreamers, if that case went the other way, would have been subject to deportation today, and they’re not. And now Louisiana will have seven abortion clinics instead of one if that case had gone the other way. That’s just enormous. And John Roberts voted with the liberals on all of them. As I say, I can’t explain what’s going on in his head, but that’s not the John Roberts who wrote Shelby County, killing the Voting Rights Act. Something is happening in his jurisprudence. I don’t think he’s becoming Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but he does not appear to be the same John Roberts he was two, five, 10 years ago.

more...

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/07/john-roberts-june-medical-abortion-moving-left.html

[Voltaire2]

1. Roberts likely doesn't want to go down in history

as the Chief Justice presiding over the end of the republic.

[empedocles]

12. The ghost of "Dred Roger Taney''

. . . and as a practical matter, [these considerations do happen, witness the sell-out SCOTUS, shift left in the latter 1930's, tendency. of Justices to evolve liberal on the Court. Also traitortrump is an ugly bet].

[lindysalsagal]

14. I remember reading as much back when the scotus changed

And luckily, whoever posted it was correct.

[Blue Owl]

2. Gonna need to see some more left-leaning votes to be sure...

n/t

[LakeArenal]

3. I always thought Roberts could be the real hero.

[tman]

4. No. He's the Mitt Romney of the SC.

He who gutted the Voting Rights Act and has shown a willingness to gut even more voter protections.

[katmondoo]

5. Does Roberts have any daughters??

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

7. I've heard of one, who has supposedly tried to "deprogram" him. Don't know if true. nt

[handmade34]

6. not left

moving right. (right, as in the humane and correct direction!!!)...

[maxsolomon]

8. Is Lucy Van Pelt going to let Charlie Brown kick the ball?

There's always a chance!

[jayfish]

9. Don't Get Your Hopes Up.

He votes left on the "little" issues then slides the knife in on the "big" ones. It a distraction.

[regnaD kciN]

15. He will dissent from the Republican line on some civil liberties matters...

...but will be steadfastly conservative when it comes to the power of business over that of ordinary people. See "Citizens United"...

[ariadne0614]

10. It crossed my mind more than once during the impeachment hearings,

. . .that anyone with half a brain would recoil at the stupid, boorish behavior of the reThugs. In contrast, the Democrats were models of decorum and rational thinking. I wondered what was going on in Roberts’ head, hoping for an epiphany.

[Wanderlust988]

11. I would like to think, but he's just playing the long game

He doesn't want the Court to look political and overtly right wing, so he's straddling the fence to show that the Court is not being political.

[roamer65]

13. Dump is opening a lot of people's eyes.

Maybe Roberts is having an “epiphany”.

[mvd]

16. On social issues he has shown some respect for the process

But I think he still fully supports the big corporate agenda. Big corporations were very happy when he was nominated.

We also have to watch him on less sloppy cases brought on social issues.