ADAM LIPTAK N.Y. TIMES
The... meaningful way to look at the court is as a movie, one starring Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. as a canny strategist with a tough side, and his eyes on the horizon. He is just 58 and is likely to lead the court for another two decades or more.
Chief Justice Roberts has proved adept at persuading the court’s more liberal justices to join compromise opinions, allowing him to cite their concessions years later as the basis for closely divided and deeply polarizing conservative victories.
His patient and methodical approach has allowed him to establish a robustly conservative record while ranking second only to Justice Anthony Kennedy as the justice most frequently in the majority.
On Tuesday, when the court struck down a part of the Voting Rights Act, Chief Justice Roberts harvested seeds he had planted four years before. In his 2009 opinion, writing for eight justices, he allowed the Voting Rights Act to stand. But the price he exacted from the court’s liberal wing was language quoted in Tuesday’s decision that seems likely to ensure the demise of the law’s centerpiece, Section 5, which requires federal oversight of states with a history of discrimination.
The chief justice helped plant new seeds on Monday, when seven justices, including two liberals, agreed to sign an opinion that over time could restrict race-conscious admissions plans at colleges and universities. Only the senior member of the court’s liberal wing, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, filed a dissent.
Last year, in the second-biggest surprise of his decision upholding President Obama’s health care law, Chief Justice Roberts persuaded two liberal justices to join the part of his opinion allowing states to opt out of the law’s expansion of Medicaid. That ruling has added significant complications to the rollout of the law.
Only the justices know their motives and arrangements, but there is a pattern here. The price of victory today for liberals in the Roberts court can be pain tomorrow.
There is more to the court’s docket than the blockbusters that land in June. The term was as contentious as it was consequential, with almost 30 percent of the cases decided by five-justice majorities, compared with an average of 22 percent in recent years. (The statistics come from Scotusblog, which produced 54 pages of data within hours of the conclusion of the term.)
In lower-profile cases, the court’s rulings continued to be good for business interests and bad for the Obama administration.
“We shouldn’t lose sight of the court cementing its legacy as the most pro-business court in the modern era,” said Lee Epstein, who teaches law and political science at the University of Southern California and helped write a recent study of the Roberts court’s business rulings.
The U. S. Chamber of Commerce had another successful year. The court cut back on class actions, favored arbitration and made it harder to sue the makers of dangerous drugs and employers accused of workplace discrimination.
“Anyone doubting that the most important story of the Roberts court is its business rulings has not been paying enough attention,” said Doug Kendall, president of the Constitutional Accountability Center, a liberal group. “This term’s 5-4 rulings, all favoring the chamber, move the law sharply to the right and to the great detriment of consumers, employees, and other Americans trying to get their day in court.”
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The Obama administration’s victory in persuading the court to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, was a repeat triumph for Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr., who also prevailed a year ago in the health care case. But his office’s overall track record before the justices is weak. ...
Adam Winkler, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, stated, “ The solicitor general usually wins nearly 70 percent of cases in which he is a party. This year, he won only 39 percent of those cases.”