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Did John Roberts switch his vote?
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Issue
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| Contributor | Brandonius Maximus |
| Last Edited | Brandonius Maximus Jun 29, 2012 11:31am |
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| Category | Speculative |
| Author | Paul Campos |
| News Date | Friday, June 29, 2012 05:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | Has a second “switch in time” saved nine? That’s the unavoidable impression that a reading of the four dissenters’ joint opinion in the PPACA case leaves. The first “switch in time” also involved a Justice Roberts – Owen Roberts, who in 1937 suddenly switched his vote in a case whose outcome signaled the end of a five-vote majority that was blocking much of the Roosevelt administration’s New Deal.
At the time, Roberts’ jurisprudential conversion seemed extremely suspicious to many observers, given that it was announced just a few weeks after FDR had presented legislation proposing an expansion of the Supreme Court to 15 members – a plan attacked by critics as a scheme to “pack the Court” with justices who would uphold New Deal laws. Cynics began referring to Roberts’ sudden change of heart as “the switch in time that saved nine” – that is, that kept the court’s membership at nine justices.
Subsequent historical research suggests that Roberts had already decided to change his vote before FDR announced his plan to expand the court, but we shouldn’t let that detail interfere with the delightful semantic coincidence that it very much looks as if the second Justice Roberts did “switch in time” — at least in part to shield nine justices from the political fallout sure to result from overturning the ACA.
Rumors had been circulating in legal circles for weeks that Chief Justice Roberts in particular was under enormous political pressure not to be the vote that would overturn the most significant piece of social legislation passed by Congress in decades. Indeed, in April President Obama took the unusual step of issuing something of a public warning on the subject, saying that he was “confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress." |
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