SCOTUS: The Game Just Changed
Amy Coney Barrett changes the calculus in a very big way.
by Rod D. Martin
October 29, 2020
Some of you are a bit pessimistic about John Roberts (and also Neil Gorsuch). You're not wrong. But the game just changed.
Gorsuch has been near-100% solid...except for the absolutely Dred Scott/Roe v. Wade-level absurdity that is his ruling on Bostock. He'll need a 100% rest-of-his-record to even peek out of the hole he dug on that one.
Fortunately, that's pretty likely. But still.
Roberts has become a pretty reliable disappointment, having become all-but the Anthony Kennedy of the early mid-21st Century. He too is with us most of the time (more than Kennedy). But on things that matter, all too often he's inexplicably AWOL. One friend of mine in the U.S. Senate says it's because he absolutely loathes Donald Trump. Some say it's because there are too many pictures of him on Jeffrey Epstein's island. More prosaically, he loves the faux-adoration of the Georgetown party set, all Democrats and RINOs, all deliberately courting him (pun intended). He's vain. It…