Did Chief Justice Roberts "pull a Souter"? - Granite Grok

Did Chief Justice Roberts “pull a Souter”?

Chief Justice John Roberts

Someone over on the wholly excellent and extraordinary RLCNH email list has just opined that in ruling as he did on Obamacare, Chief Justice John Roberts “pulled a Souter.” That is, the feeling is that Roberts—like so many “conservative” judges nominated and confirmed to the Supreme Court in the past, has “matured” and gained “strange new respect” as the political classes worked on them—has once again betrayed the values and ideas that lead him to be put on the Supreme Court.

Wrong. So wrong, in fact, that I need to Explain All, once again, to those who doubt. Here’s the way it is….

Roberts did not “pull a Souter.” In actuality, he committed a political and Constitutional masterstroke. Both most conservatives and virtually all statists are failing to understand that…so far. Doubtless people at the time didn’t understand what Justice Marshall did when he ruled in Marbury v. Madison either. In the words of Constitutional law professor Randy Barnett, “this is big.”

Look HEREHERE, and HERE to read and understand why.
Roberts did not “pull a Souter.” In actuality, he committed a political and Constitutional masterstroke. Both most conservatives and virtually all statists are failing to understand that…so far. Doubtless people at the time didn’t understand what Justice Marshall did when he ruled in Marbury v. Madison either. In the words of Constitutional law professor Randy Barnett, “this is big.”

Admittedly, it’s still sinking in. As noted, most observers—on both sides of the statist and anti-statist ideological divide—don’t perceive what a monumental Constitutional coup Roberts has pulled off. As Red State’s Erick Erickson has written: ”John Roberts is playing at a different game than the rest of us. We’re on poker. He’s on chess.”

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