Pretty sure he'd have been before the court either way. Rehnquist liberals were persuadable.

[ancianita]

And John the Pirate Roberts did just that -- he was the lead trainer on the legal team that argued before the Rehnquist court to stop the FL count.

During the 2000 presidential election, Roberts went to Florida to assist George W. Bush,[68] by which time Jeffrey Toobin identified him as "among the top advocates of his generation".[69] ... His arguments against government regulation often appealed to Rehnquist and the Court's conservatives while his style and skill in rhetoric won him the respect of John Paul Stevens and the Court's liberals.[71] Democrats and Republicans alike widely viewed Roberts as one of the most distinguished advocates to appear before the Supreme Court.[72]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Roberts

IMO, it was, overall, a bad faith argument that the court's liberals just didn't see; because of his style and approach, Roberts' contempt for liberal scholars was lost on them at the time. Which, imo, was not their fault, since most scholars didn't see the wider ranging ramifications of neoliberalism at the time.