NPR Fears and Hates the Long Game of the Supreme Court of Chief Justice Roberts: NPR

What was he thinking? This is the question many are asking from both sides of the political spectrum.

Chief Justice John Roberts has voted several times with the Conservatives of the Supreme Court except in one and only one 5-on-4 decision. Written by Roberts, the judgment has blocked the addition of a question on citizenship in the 2020 census, leaving President Trump angrily trying desperately to find a solution.

He also left a lot of speculation about the reasons of the Chief Justice.

For some Conservatives, Roberts' vote in the census case was another original sin, much like his 2012 vote to uphold Key Obamacare provisions. The president of the Union of American Conservatives has even called for the indictment of Roberts.

"I am for blaming the Chief Justice for lying to us about his support for the Constitution," tweeted ACU President Matt Schlapp. "He is responsible for Robertscare and is now looking for a large number of illegal residents to help the Dems organize his Congress."

Curt Levey, chairman of the Conservative Committee for Justice, does not go that far, but he said the census's decision meant that "having a conservative majority in court is always a dream rather than a problem." reality".

Yet even Levey admits that Roberts has been a reliable conservative vote in court. Indeed, Roberts got an 80% agreement rate with the other conservatives of the court in all notices, the same percentage as the most conservative court justice, Clarence Thomas.

As for the lawyers and the liberal and moderate activists, they did not speak exactly of the Chief Justice in laudatory terms. Although relieved by the fact that the census at the time seemed safe from political machinations, they were exasperated by another opinion, and perhaps even more important, according to Roberts.

Traitor or curator on the agenda?

Written for himself and the other four curators of the court, the chief justice closed the door to defenders of the gerrymanders supporters. The decision will allow many state legislatures to establish a legislative line of action between the Congress and the legislatures in order to establish their own political power.

Because Republicans now control the state legislatures in 30 states, versus 18 under the control of the Democrats, this decision is a boon to the GOP's power. (There are 22 states completely controlled by the Republicans and 14 in which the Democrats have total control).

The Liberals are not the only ones who have called for judicial scrutiny of extreme political partisanship in a time of computer-driven hyper-partisanship.

"There is no doubt that we have a program here," said Charles Fried, a Harvard law professor, who for four years served as Reagan General, the government's principal solicitor before the Reagan administration. Supreme Court.

He and other former Republican officials have filed a brief on behalf of those who challenge the gerrymanders of extreme supporters. Alluding to Roberts' famous commentary of confirmation hearing that a judge's job is not to argue, but to "whistle bullets and strikes," caustically observes, "what are not strikes or blows. " but persistent program. "

The purpose "is to make sure that the law, whether it be the courts, the Constitution or the legislators" to regulate "everything related to elections".

Fried catalogs Roberts' decisions in this regard. He wrote the court's decision 5 to 4 quashing the Voting Rights Act, a law passed and repeatedly reinstated by major and bipartisan congressional majorities. He has written or participated in a series of long-standing delisting decisions, as well as new limits, on election campaign contributions, also promulgated by Congress, to limit the role of large sums in politics.

And when the court, by a vote of five to four, confirmed the creation of independent redistricting commissions created by referendums, Roberts wrote dissent. The fifth deciding vote in this case was Justice Anthony Kennedy, who is now retired. Fried is worried that the 2015 decision is in jeopardy, even though Roberts, in the gerrymandering decision, has designated the commissions as "a way" to remove the clipping hands from the holders.

While Fried and others worry about what they regard as Roberts 'sneakiness, Roberts' conservative critics are not at all appeased. They see him as a traitor, mainly for the Obamacare decisions and the census.

Levey, from the Justice Committee, sees Roberts as a man more concerned with his image than the law.

"It often seems that he's very focused on his legacy and on popularity, rather than what a judge should do," said Levey, adding that "all the pressure exerted by the mainstream media and the establishment is to go left.

Motivated by a "solomonic dogma"?

Others, like Josh Blackman, a constitutional law professor at Houston's Southwest College of Law, have a different point of view. Although Roberts was nicknamed "The New Justice Swing", following Kennedy's retirement last year, Blackman thinks it's an abuse of language.

He considers Kennedy and retired Judge Sandra Day O. Connor as "somewhere in the middle," while "Roberts is a strong conservative, but for some reason, in some high-profile cases, he borrows these very paths. Strange that no one else in the yard is going with it. "

It is true that no one in the field has followed all of Roberts' arguments in the census or obamacare cases.

"I think Roberts is motivated by some sort of solomonic dogma, which in all high-score cases," said Blackman, "that the correct decision is that of separating the proverbial baby."

Of course, the Chief Justices, Republicans and Democrats, Liberals and Conservatives, have always believed that they have a special duty to maintain public confidence in the courts as an institution.

For example, in 2000, Chief Justice William Rehnquist drafted the opinion confirming a long-standing decision. insult, the decision that required the police, 34 years ago, to warn the suspects of their rights.

And, in the 1930s, Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes worked hard behind the scenes, on the ground and outside the court, to prevent President Franklin Roosevelt's fill-in plan. to become law. Some historians believe that he even helped persuade a judge to moderate his point of view to defuse the threat.

Today, Roberts faces similar threats: a president who openly and repeatedly reprimands judges in partisan and even ethnic terms, and candidates for the Democratic presidential election who believe that the number of judges to the Supreme Court should be increased legally if Democrats take control of the Senate. They claim that the Republicans, by refusing for almost a year to consider the Supreme Court's President Obama's candidate, have so piled up the record that the move is necessary.

As noted by some of Roberts' connoisseurs, although this proposal and other proposals are still in their infancy, the Chief Justice can not ignore the alarm bells. And he knows that if the court moves too far right and too fast, these bells will only ring louder.