Dahlia Lithwick & Mark Joseph Stern: The Political Genius of John Roberts

[babylonsister]

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/07/political-genius-supreme-court-john-roberts.html

Jurisprudence
The Political Genius of John Roberts
The chief justice stood up to Trump, placated Democrats, and scored indisputable points for judicial supremacy.
By Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern
July 09, 20204:11 PM

snip//

As he did last year, Roberts played the term perfectly. He won the headlines and preserved the big lofty principle about big lofty courts, while still making it impossible for any of us to know exactly how corrupt the Trump family really is. But the stakes were even higher this year, as the election loomed over the term. And so he set out to ensure that the Supreme Court would not become a campaign issue. The chief justice knows that both parties treat the court like a piñata, trying to convince their respective bases that they know how to smack the most candy out of it. He knows Democrats remain traumatized over Merrick Garland’s stymied appointment and Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s toxic confirmation. During the Democratic primary, multiple top-tier candidates pronounced themselves open to adding seats to the Supreme Court to counter Republicans’ judicial chicanery. Roberts also knows that a term filled with one conservative triumph after another would only have given Democrats ammunition to run against the court, framing it as a partisan institution in need of reform. That didn’t happen.

By contrast, it’s difficult to imagine mainstream Democrats seriously endorsing court packing after the term that just wrapped. A majority of the justices pushed back against the Trump’s administration’s attempt to deport Dreamers, to write LGBTQ people out of civil rights laws, and to shield the president from all congressional scrutiny. They halted, at least for now, the effort to regulate abortion clinics out of existence. And they shoved off an attempt to expand the scope of the Second Amendment.

snip//

The irony of Roberts’ endless maneuvering is that preventing the court from appearing political requires him to act politically. Brokering compromises behind the scenes, manipulating the docket to keep hot-button cases far away from the court, forecasting the impact of each decision on the election—these are inherently political acts undertaken to convince public that the court is apolitical. They are not the traditional duties of a jurist. But Roberts is the exceedingly rare judge who understands politics, not just party politics, but also how to behave politically. And he recognizes that, as Americans lose faith in the other two branches of government, he has the power, and perhaps the responsibility, to cultivate more trust in the court.

It is worth asking what Roberts will do when Trump eventually leaves office, when the chief justice no longer feels obligated to prove that his court is not beholden to a singularly toxic and corrupt president. To be sure, this chief justice is still not a centrist; he remains devoted to his pet projects, like blessing voter suppression laws or hobbling administrative agencies’ independence. It is simply too soon to tell whether Roberts has really had a change of heart on hot-button issues like reproductive rights and LGBTQ equality, or if he just wants to shield his court from political blowback in an election year. While he has succeeded in lowering the temperature of SCOTUS discourse, he has not clearly abandoned those conservative crusades that evoked so much Democratic outrage in the first place. Citizens United is still on the books. The Voting Rights Act in still in grave peril.

But if he has distinguished himself this term, it’s for steadfastly refusing to join in the abdication of conservative principles to the cult of Trumpism. The number of conservatives in public life who have stood up to the worst aspects of Trumpism—the xenophobia, the small-mindedness, the abject cruelty—has been vanishingly small. You may not agree with the chief justice’s views on race, religious liberty, or voting rights. But Roberts deserves credit not just for protecting his court from Trump, but also for positioning it to fight another day.

[BamaRefugee]

1. He's just waiting for trump to go, then he can begin his real work of right wing rule through the

courts.
Trump is too glaring, too loud, too blatant for Roberts' delicate sensibilities.
Taking away more rights from people needs to be done with decorum, and hushed tones, the machinations for creating a future conservative utopia should be kept out of sight.

[babylonsister]

2. And you don't know that. We shall see. Maybe

the state of this country has thoroughly disgusted him, and who could blame him?

[BamaRefugee]

3. If that's the case, then he's a disaster. The duty of the Supreme Court, and ESPECIALLY the Chief

Justice, is to rule IMPARTIALLY on ONLY the legal merits of a case.
Not to try to mold society by overlaying their ideas of "how things should be" onto their decisions.

What if he's "thoroughly disgusted" by the current casinos and lotteries in various states, by legalized cannabis in various states, by, oh I don't know, interracial marriage? Hundreds of other things that might disgust a hard core right winger. Would it be ok for him to engineer the reversal of such things by crafting a decision that accomplishes his aims rather than upholding the law?

[BamaRefugee]

4. Here's a direct quote from the article you posted

"It is worth asking what Roberts will do when Trump eventually leaves office, when the chief justice no longer feels obligated to prove that his court is not beholden to a singularly toxic and corrupt president. To be sure, this chief justice is still not a centrist; he remains devoted to his pet projects, like blessing voter suppression laws or hobbling administrative agencies’ independence. It is simply too soon to tell whether Roberts has really had a change of heart on hot-button issues like reproductive rights and LGBTQ equality, or if he just wants to shield his court from political blowback in an election year. While he has succeeded in lowering the temperature of SCOTUS discourse, he has not clearly abandoned those conservative crusades that evoked so much Democratic outrage in the first place. Citizens United is still on the books. The Voting Rights Act in still in grave peril."

[babylonsister]

5. Yes, read that before I posted the OP.

As also stated there, it is too soon to tell whether he's had a change of heart. For now, I'm happy he's voting the way he is.