Charles Krauthammer: Justice Roberts Was 'Intimidated' By the Left

He nails it.

See Bill O'Reilly's interview with Charles Krauthammer at RealClearPolitics.

And more here: "Custodian of the Court: Charles Krauthammer Explains Chief Justice John Roberts' ObamaCare Ruling."

And in case you haven't read it yet, here's the opinion in NFIB v. Sebelius.

The strange news keeps coming out about this. See Owen Kerr at Volokh, "So Now We Have Supreme Court Leaks Disagreeing With the Substance of Other Supreme Court Leaks" (via Memeorandum).

And John Podhoretz thinks Roberts caved to the bullying, "Roberts the Coward":

Our system grants federal judges lifetime tenure precisely to shield them from political pressure. Of course, the Supreme Court has often fallen short of that ideal. The early 20th century political wit Finley Peter Dunne, writing in the voice of Chicago saloonkeeper Mr. Dooley, famously declared flatly that “the Supreme Coourt follows th’ illiction returns.”

Yet the polls show the unpopularity of ObamaCare, as did the overwhelming results of the election in November 2010 that followed the bill’s passage. So, if Roberts had been following election returns and public opinion, he wouldn’t have hesitated to overturn.

No, he seems to have flip-flopped over worries about the hostility a 5-4 decision overturning ObamaCare would generate among pundits. No, let me be more precise — among liberal pundits like E.J. Dionne and the editorialists at The New York Times.

It seems astonishing that the chief justice of the United States would be motivated by fear of E.J. Dionne and the like.

But there it is. And if this is indeed why the chief justice changed his vote — out of fear of attacks on the court’s legitimacy by scribblers like me — then the court’s legitimacy deserves to be challenged.

What legitimacy does a decision on the most important case of the last decade have if a justice came to it for reasons other than his understanding of the law?

Not to mention that the naked intellectual cynicism on display in the Roberts opinion has satisfied no one.

In her concurring opinion, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg heaps scorn upon it. The dissent by the four conservatives whom Roberts abandoned “deliberately ignored Roberts’ decision,” according to Crawford’s reporting, “as if they were no longer even willing to engage with him in debate.”

That's sounds overly harsh, actually. Roberts was bullied, but I don't think it's immoral that he switched. People change their minds for many reasons. And depending how Team Romney plays it, the Supreme Court might have helped deliver the election to the Republicans. More on that later.

Meanwhile, Ann Althouse argues that Roberts has made it extremely difficult for Democrats to use Commerce Cause powers to expand government going forward: "'The commentary on John Roberts's solo walk into the Affordable Care Act wilderness is converging on a common theme: The Chief Justice is a genius'."