John Roberts
Roberts versus Roberts
The Accountable Presidency
Crisis and Command: A History of Executive Power from George Washington to George W. Bush By John Yoo (Kaplan, 544 pp., $29.95) Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State By Garry Wills (Penguin, 288 pp., $27.95) I. READ MORE >>
Hoist Your Pitchforks!
WASHINGTON--"Populism" is the most overused and misused word in the lexicon of commentary. But thanks to a reckless decision by Chief Justice John Roberts' Supreme Court and also the greed of the nation's financial barons, we have reached a true populist moment in American politics. The Supreme Court's 5-4 decision last week giving American corporations the right to unlimited political spending was an astonishing display of judicial arrogance, overreach and unjustified activism. READ MORE >>
Benched
Rocking Roberts?
WASHINGTON -- President Obama's health care speech on Wednesday will be only the second most consequential political moment of the week. Judged by the standard of an event's potential long-term impact on our public life, the most important will be the argument before the Supreme Court (on the same day, as it happens) about a case that, if decided wrongly, could surrender control of our democracy to corporate interests. READ MORE >>
Obama And The Court
Adam Liptak notes an interesting talk John Roberts gave a few weeks back about the importance of Supreme Court justices having prior judicial experience: READ MORE >>
Lib and Let Die
At Barack Obama’s inauguration, John Roberts’s adverb trouble, subconsciously driven by a “blackboard grammar” quest to deflect faithfully from “splitting” the verb execute from the auxiliary will, was a rather gorgeous example of how educated people can be tripped up by unworkable hoaxes about how language works. (“To boldly go where no man has gone before” is “bad” grammar?). READ MORE >>
Narrow Minded
In 2006, at the end of his first term on the Supreme Court, John Roberts told me and other journalists that his goal as chief justice would be to promote unanimity and collegiality by encouraging his fellow justices to converge around narrow decisions with few dissents. During his first term, Roberts succeeded impressively: More than half of the Court's opinions were unanimous, and only 13 percent were decided by a 5-4 vote. READ MORE >>
The Most Mysterious Right
Out of Range by Mark V. Tushnet (Oxford University Press, 156 pp., $19.95) READ MORE >>
Partial Law
“THANK GOD for President Bush, and thank God for Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito,” intoned Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention last week, after the Supreme Court announced its decision in Gonzales v. Carhart, the so-called partial-birth abortion case. But Land also should have thanked Justice Anthony Kennedy, whose majority opinion dangerously reframes the abortion debate. READ MORE >>
