Must-Read: Ian Millhiser: Chief Justice Roberts’s Current Thinking

Ian Millhiser: Chief Justice Roberts’s Current Thinking: “Read together, Roberts’s King and Obergefell opinions…

…suggest that the chief justice has grown tired of efforts to politicize the judiciary, and that he is particularly annoyed with his fellow conservatives…. Roberts[‘s] King opinion actually placed the Affordable Care Act on stronger legal footing than it would have rested on if conservatives have never brought this lawsuit…. And his Obergefell dissent is almost gratuitous in its dismissive approach to Lochner. It is difficult not to read both opinions as a rejection of the views expressed by men like Barnett, Will and Adler.
The Chief Justice of the United States, in other words, sent a clear message to the increasingly vocal forces that wish to use the Supreme Court to enact a sweeping economic agenda — not on my watch…. Roberts will eagerly give the Federalist [Society] everything they asked for up until 2009, but his King and Obergefell opinions suggest that he may give them no more.