A Court source tells Salon the chief justice wrote the majority opinion and much of the dissent in the ACA case
My source insists that “most of the material in the first three quarters of the joint dissent was drafted in Chief Justice Roberts’ chambers in April and May.” Only the last portion of what eventually became the joint dissent was drafted without any participation by the chief justice.Read it at Salon
Roberts wrote both Obamacare opinions
by Paul Campos
(h/t Huffington Post)
Well, you have to admit that, if true, the guy is versatile.
Like the unemployed geography teacher, he can teach it round or flat.
ReplyDeleteIt makes sense, the senior justice (that is, the Chief Justice, and then the Associate Justices by length of service) on the winning side hss dibs on writing the opinion if he wishes (I don't remember offhand if he can pick someone else or, if he declines to write it, it just goes to the next senior justice).
In other words, if Roberts was the fifth vote on the conservative side, he could elect to write that opinion and then when he switched to the liberal side, he could elect to write that one as well, though obviously he could only sign one. Once he switched teams, Scalia would be the senior justice on the conservative side. If Scalia simply used Roberts draft as the dissent (instead of writing his own), the legal term for that is, sticking it to The Man.