Litigation

Roberts Court ?Aggressive? in Latest Term

By Peter Hardin

As critiques of the Supreme Court’s recently completed term continue to roll in, the impact of Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. is a prime topic.

In its latest term, “the Roberts court demonstrated its determination to act aggressively to undo aspects of law it found wanting, no matter the cost,” a New York Times editorial said.

To back up this analysis, the editorial cited from Justice Roberts’ concurring opinion in Citizens United. It summed up Justice Roberts’ approach this way:

“Justice Roberts wrote that the court must be willing to depart from a previous decision if it thinks it does damage to a constitutional ideal, and particularly if the precedent was an aberration. A decision can become an aberration, it turns out, if the court?s conservatives never agreed with it in the first place. If not quite legislating from the bench, this is not a formula for stability.”

A Los Angeles Times editorial limited its focus to First Amendment decisions by the court. In that category, it said, the Supreme Court compiled in its latest term “a mixed record at best.”

In the San Francisco Chronicle, a news article about the past term said, “The biggest loser may have been the justices’ image as practitioners of judicial restraint, or, as Chief Justice John Roberts put it at his 2005 confirmation hearing, as umpires who simply call balls and strikes.”

According to a Los Angeles Times news article, the “year’s most important moment” may have come in January when President Obama criticized the high court’s conservative majority face-to-face during his State of the Union address. “The incident put a public spotlight on the deep divide between the Obama White House and the Roberts court, one that could have a profound effect in the years ahead,” the article said.

Full post as published by The Gavel on July 06, 2010 (boomark / email).