The Supreme Court’s Conservatives Are Mad as Hell at Chief Justice Roberts

Jan Crawford, the respected CBS legal
correspondent who
first reported
that Chief Justice John Roberts switched his
vote in the ObamaCare case,
has a new story out
with more comments sourced to individuals
who appear to have direct knowledge of the Supreme Court’s internal
debates. And as she reports, the four dissenting justices in the
case are mad as hell at Roberts for his actions:

If Roberts had been with the liberals from the beginning,
sources tell me that would have been one thing; but switching his
position – and relatively late in the process – infuriated the
conservatives.

Of course it’s unclear why he switched. He may have been focused
solely on the law. But that is not what some of his colleagues
believe.

Roberts initially sided with the four conservatives to strike
down the heart of the health care law – the individual mandate, the
requirement that all Americans buy insurance or pay a penalty.

When he changed his mind and joined with the liberals to uphold
the law instead, he tried furiously – with a fair amount of “arm
twisting” – to get Justice Anthony Kennedy to come along. Kennedy
sometimes breaks with conservatives, so Roberts likely saw him as
his best hope.

But on this issue of federal power, Kennedy was firm. The
conservatives refused to even engage with Roberts on joining his
opinion to uphold the law. They set out writing their own opinion –
they wrote it to look like a majority decision, according to
sources, because they hoped Roberts would rejoin them to strike
down the mandate. Kennedy relentlessly lobbied Roberts until the
end to come back. Of course he did not, and the conservatives’
decision became a dissent.

Crawford’s story also notably contradicts the recent report at
Salon which claimed that Roberts
wrote both the majority and the bulk of the dissent
in the
case.

Read Reason’s ongoing ObamaCare coverage here.