John Roberts Played This Supreme Court Term Perfectly

When Justice Anthony Kennedy retired a year ago, it was obvious that Chief Justice John Roberts—nobody’s median anything—would become the court’s center of gravity, while remaining its center of gravitas. If there could be a one-sentence summary of his majority opinion in the term’s census case—in which the chief joined the court’s liberals to refuse to allow Donald Trump’s commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census—it would be this: “Go ahead and lie to me, but at least do it with gravitas.” Ross and his crew of Keystone Cops had attempted to add the citizenship question that would depress Hispanic response rates and boost white voting power in future redistricting, using pretextual reasons about which the secretary lied. We haven’t had a truly centrist justice since Sandra Day O’Connor retired in 2006; Kennedy was, as Jeffrey Toobin famously put it, “not a moderate but an extremist—of varied enthusiasms.” Roberts sometimes plays the role of a centrist, as when he votes to push Eighth Amendment law one centimeter to the left or tells the Trump administration to lie better when it wants to undermine civil rights. Indeed, if Kennedy is to have a swingy successor, it won’t be Roberts or even Kennedy’s replacement on the court, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who cast staunchly conservative votes throughout his first term.