The Questions John Roberts Has Never Answered [View all]

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from truthdig:


The Questions John Roberts Has Never Answered

Posted on Nov 11, 2014
By Bill Blum


As the Supreme Court prepares to invalidate Obamacare’s federal tax subsidies in yet another assault on the social safety net, it’s a good time to review the promises Chief Justice John Roberts made at his September 2005 Senate confirmation hearing and re-examine the key questions he was never forced to answer.

Students of judicial history will recall that Roberts was initially nominated to take the place of retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and was tapped for the chief’s position only after the death of former Chief Justice William Rehnquist. Suddenly thrust into the national spotlight, Roberts declared in his now famous opening statement to the judiciary committee that he was “humbled” by his nomination. In keeping with that humility, he pledged that he would “decide every case based on the record, according to the rule of law, without fear or favor, to the best of my ability. And I will remember that it’s my job to call balls and strikes and not to pitch or bat.”

Since that time, however, Roberts and his Republican brethren have acted more like Abner Doubleday redesigning the rules of the game, blazing a trail of conservative judicial activism unseen since the early 1930s. Among other decisions, the court under Roberts’ stewardship has recognized an individual right to bear arms under the Second Amendment; unleashed the power of corporations and the wealthy to spend limitless money on elections under the guise of free speech and the First Amendment; invoked the First Amendment rights of nonunion members to curb the right of public sector unions—the last bastion of organized labor in America—to collect dues and fees; and gutted the Voting Rights Act pursuant to a wholly novel interpretation of states’ rights under the 14th and 15th Amendments.

Although these decisions and many others have garnered much-warranted scrutiny from the mainstream media, Roberts has never been definitively linked to what many scholars consider the single worst and most activist high court ruling of the 21st century—the per curiam (unsigned) 5-4 judicial coup d’état delivered in Bush v. Gore, which halted a manual recount of the disputed Florida vote in the 2000 presidential election and handed victory to George W. Bush. .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_questions_john_roberts_has_never_answered_20141111