The chief justice is to blame for the Supreme Court’s free fall

At his 2005 Senate confirmation hearing to be chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, John G. Roberts Jr. famously invoked America’s national pastime in describing his view of the judicial role in our constitutional order: “Judges are like umpires. Making matters worse, the timing of Roberts’ flip coincided with Obama’s spring 2012 Rose Garden speech, in which he ludicrously described the possibility that the Supreme Court could nullify his healthcare law as “unprecedented” or “extraordinary.” Did the chief justice conveniently switch his vote in a historically important case so as to mistakenly attempt to maintain the high court’s “institutional integrity” in the face of an imperious president? Roberts’ Dobbs stunt was legally incoherent to the point of outright intellectual dishonesty, but it was politically convenient for Roberts’ idiosyncratic conception of the role of the Supreme Court chief justice — that of a jurist who should somehow attempt to “rise above the fray” and steer the ship of the court in a way that preserves the court’s public image and integrity. As the notes to the U.S. government’s official online Constitution, available at Congress.gov, state: “he Supreme Court’s jurisprudence reflects that … the Court will accord substantial deference to the government’s immigration policies, particularly those that implicate matters of national security.” It seems Boasberg and Roberts need a remedial legal lesson or two.