And I'm liking it. I appreciate it. I love the Plum Line but both Greg Sargent and Paul Waldman drive me crazy they hit you in the head with the dire consequences that will happen if this goes wrong which I don't doubt and I agree reality must win out but then Ms. Moncrieff has a pretty reality based view of things as well as she's argued this case before the Supreme Court.
"On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in King v. Burwell, which will decide whether health insurance subsidies should be available nationwide or only in those 16 states that established exchanges. Several questions have recently emerged over the legitimacy of the plaintiffs’ case, including issues of jurisdiction and congressional intent, but there’s an even deeper flaw: The plaintiffs’ interpretation would render the statute unconstitutional."
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/121211/king-v-burwell-oral-arguments-scotus-will-rule-obamacare
For more on Plum Line pessimism
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/03/see-this-is-why-greg-sargent-gets-on-my.html
What also helps is that Roberts is loath to have too many 5-4 decisions on earth-shattering cases as it leads people to not unreasonably conclude that the Court is just the 3rd GOP House of Congress.
"Roberts, of course, has not ceased to be a conservative. Before Obamacare — or since — it’s hard to think of a case in which he has not voted the way conservative activists had hoped when they recommended him to President George W. Bush. The Roberts court has been described as the most pro-business in history. Its liberals complain that consumers are on a losing streak and that the court has imposed new roadblocks for those trying to prove discrimination."
"Yet chief justices tend not to see the court as a vehicle for advancing their unadulterated ideas. A transformation came over Roberts’s predecessor and mentor, William H. Rehnquist, after becoming chief. As an associate justice, Rehnquist wrote so many solo dissents that his clerks awarded him a Lone Ranger doll. But like chief justices before him, in his new role he felt a responsibility to guard the court’s precedents and image. The most famous example is his metamorphosis on the Miranda rule, requiring police officers to read suspects their rights. For years, Rehnquist had denounced the rule as constitutionally unsound. But after his ascent hevoted to uphold it, saying the warnings “have become part of our national culture.”
"Roberts came to the court as chief, so there is no similar evolution to judge. But those who know him say his vision of the responsibilities of the chief is paramount. “Associate Justice Roberts would be much closer to Scalia thanChief Justice Roberts is in terms of their approach to cases,” says one lawyer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he argues Supreme Court cases. Anticipating this approach, Roberts pledged himself to the principle of stare decisis at his confirmation hearings and preached a gospel of judicial modesty, saying he came with “no agenda.”
"Roberts, 60, jokes about the “odd historical quirk” that gives the chief justice only one vote. But he has learned to use the tools that come with the job: He shapes the discussion at conference; he writes the court’s opinion, or assigns it strategically, when he is in the majority; he’s happy to settle for nonthreatening, incremental changes that may bloom later into something more. And last term, what Roberts has described as the chief justice’s “particular obligation to try to achieve consensus” paid off. The share of unanimous decisions soared to 66 percent, a level not seen since the 1940s. The share of 5-to-4 decisions, high during Roberts’s tenure compared with those of other chief justices, fell to 14 percent, the lowest since he joined the court."
"While he can’t change Washington’s partisan warfare, Roberts does what he can to avoid becoming a weapon in it, those who know him say. Unlike his colleagues, he does not give interviews. He avoids partisan gatherings such as the Federalist Society’s annual gala (where Scalia and Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. take turns providing the after-dinner remarks) or the American Constitution Society (where Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor have been honored). Even the bipartisan Gridiron Dinner, where the nation’s political elite gather for gentle roasts, may have proved too much for Roberts: There’s always a seat at the head table for the chief justice of the United States, but this one hasn’t attended since 2009."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/obamacare-threatens-to-end-john-robertss-dream-of-a-nonpartisan-supreme-court/2015/02/27/325cd0cc-bcb3-11e4-8668-4e7ba8439ca6_story.html?tid=pm_opinions_pop
I mean if the goal is to avoid being a weapon in partisan warfare is there anything you'd want to do less than have a 5-4 vote killing off federal exchanges?
Having said that-yes I agree with Paul Waldman:
"Just think, millions of people’s lives depend on what kind of mood this one man is in."
Note: he is referring to Kennedy here but it could apply to Roberts as well, of course, and the point is well-taken. The answer to this is: more Democrats. First of all if Hillary wins in 2016-yes I'm presuming she's the nominee-then we may finally get a chance to change the ideological bias of the
SJC-it's been conservative since the late 80s.
As I like to say the main problem is not that Democrats aren't liberal enough but that we don't have enough Democrats. If we get enough Democrats a lot of the problems we suffer from now go away.
"On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in King v. Burwell, which will decide whether health insurance subsidies should be available nationwide or only in those 16 states that established exchanges. Several questions have recently emerged over the legitimacy of the plaintiffs’ case, including issues of jurisdiction and congressional intent, but there’s an even deeper flaw: The plaintiffs’ interpretation would render the statute unconstitutional."
"Several of my colleagues and I made this case in an amicus brief to the Court. If the plaintiffs’ interpretation carries the day, then Obamacare has threatened states that failed to establish exchanges with virtually assured destruction of their individual insurance markets. And the Supreme Court held in the first Obamacare case that the federal government may not make that kind of extreme threat. Congress can't hold a gun to states’ heads in order to force them to implement federal policies."
"This constitutional problem matters—maybe more than any other flaw in the plaintiffs’ case—because it puts the conservative justices in a bind. In general, conservative justices try to avoid second-guessing a statute’s text, even if the text leads to seemingly crazy results, and the plaintiffs have a case that the text of the Affordable Care Act compels their victory. But some conservatives on the bench, notably Chief Justice John Roberts, are also dedicated to a different and sometimes-contradictory principle: that they should not assume that Congress wrote an unconstitutional statute"
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/121211/king-v-burwell-oral-arguments-scotus-will-rule-obamacare
For more on Plum Line pessimism
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/03/see-this-is-why-greg-sargent-gets-on-my.html
What also helps is that Roberts is loath to have too many 5-4 decisions on earth-shattering cases as it leads people to not unreasonably conclude that the Court is just the 3rd GOP House of Congress.
"Roberts, of course, has not ceased to be a conservative. Before Obamacare — or since — it’s hard to think of a case in which he has not voted the way conservative activists had hoped when they recommended him to President George W. Bush. The Roberts court has been described as the most pro-business in history. Its liberals complain that consumers are on a losing streak and that the court has imposed new roadblocks for those trying to prove discrimination."
"Yet chief justices tend not to see the court as a vehicle for advancing their unadulterated ideas. A transformation came over Roberts’s predecessor and mentor, William H. Rehnquist, after becoming chief. As an associate justice, Rehnquist wrote so many solo dissents that his clerks awarded him a Lone Ranger doll. But like chief justices before him, in his new role he felt a responsibility to guard the court’s precedents and image. The most famous example is his metamorphosis on the Miranda rule, requiring police officers to read suspects their rights. For years, Rehnquist had denounced the rule as constitutionally unsound. But after his ascent hevoted to uphold it, saying the warnings “have become part of our national culture.”
"Roberts came to the court as chief, so there is no similar evolution to judge. But those who know him say his vision of the responsibilities of the chief is paramount. “Associate Justice Roberts would be much closer to Scalia thanChief Justice Roberts is in terms of their approach to cases,” says one lawyer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he argues Supreme Court cases. Anticipating this approach, Roberts pledged himself to the principle of stare decisis at his confirmation hearings and preached a gospel of judicial modesty, saying he came with “no agenda.”
"Roberts, 60, jokes about the “odd historical quirk” that gives the chief justice only one vote. But he has learned to use the tools that come with the job: He shapes the discussion at conference; he writes the court’s opinion, or assigns it strategically, when he is in the majority; he’s happy to settle for nonthreatening, incremental changes that may bloom later into something more. And last term, what Roberts has described as the chief justice’s “particular obligation to try to achieve consensus” paid off. The share of unanimous decisions soared to 66 percent, a level not seen since the 1940s. The share of 5-to-4 decisions, high during Roberts’s tenure compared with those of other chief justices, fell to 14 percent, the lowest since he joined the court."
"While he can’t change Washington’s partisan warfare, Roberts does what he can to avoid becoming a weapon in it, those who know him say. Unlike his colleagues, he does not give interviews. He avoids partisan gatherings such as the Federalist Society’s annual gala (where Scalia and Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. take turns providing the after-dinner remarks) or the American Constitution Society (where Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor have been honored). Even the bipartisan Gridiron Dinner, where the nation’s political elite gather for gentle roasts, may have proved too much for Roberts: There’s always a seat at the head table for the chief justice of the United States, but this one hasn’t attended since 2009."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/obamacare-threatens-to-end-john-robertss-dream-of-a-nonpartisan-supreme-court/2015/02/27/325cd0cc-bcb3-11e4-8668-4e7ba8439ca6_story.html?tid=pm_opinions_pop
I mean if the goal is to avoid being a weapon in partisan warfare is there anything you'd want to do less than have a 5-4 vote killing off federal exchanges?
Having said that-yes I agree with Paul Waldman:
"Just think, millions of people’s lives depend on what kind of mood this one man is in."
Note: he is referring to Kennedy here but it could apply to Roberts as well, of course, and the point is well-taken. The answer to this is: more Democrats. First of all if Hillary wins in 2016-yes I'm presuming she's the nominee-then we may finally get a chance to change the ideological bias of the
SJC-it's been conservative since the late 80s.
As I like to say the main problem is not that Democrats aren't liberal enough but that we don't have enough Democrats. If we get enough Democrats a lot of the problems we suffer from now go away.
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