Why The Shock Over John Roberts' "Political" Mindset?
These stories that the Chief Justice behaved politically in upholding the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act - - and thus somehow behaved inappropriately - - are really naive.
From an advisory committee in the smallest Village and Town in the county to the US Supreme Court, all decisions are political, because people, not robots, are making the decisions.
"Political" is not the same thing as "partisan," or "prejudicial."
I can remember David Fellman, my Civil Liberties professor at UW-Madison a long time ago saying to the class, "Supreme Court Justices read the newspapers, too."
3 comments:
I'm glad you said it. Its similar to how people were accusing Obama of being "political" when he announced his changes in immigration law enforcement. Yes, it was "political" in the sense that it helps his re-election chances. But that doesn't mean it wasn't also the right thing to do.
Expecting SCOTUS justices to toe the party line based on previous rulings or who appointed them was reasonable but now we see we have a leader in Chief Justice Roberts who in many respects has a more moderate approach to decisions. He is the wild card now who loaded up on free passes for even more difficult decisions down the road.
Or he was making up for his screw up of his swearing in of Obama! Nah
Good of him for hanging tough. I saw that Kennedy was hounding him for weeks yet Roberts was unyielding.
Justice Roberts is married to Ann Sullivan Roberts who was legal counsel for Feminists for Life. She still does pro bono work for this organization which represents largely Catholic Women. FFL came out in support of the Affordable Health Care Act as did the Conference of Catholic Bishops. While both groups don't like the abortion and contraception parts of the Act, they prefer to work on changing the law rather than repealing it. I don't know if this is why Justice Roberts made the decision he made of course but it does give a little background.
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