Wild and unpredictableON MAY 1st John Roberts, America’s conservative chief justice, listed left to form a rare majority with the Supreme Court’s four liberal members. Cities may have grounds to sue, the quintet said, when banks make predatory loans to racial minorities. The timing, for some, was suggestive. With Neil Gorsuch now in Antonin Scalia’s old chair and retirement rumours flying about Anthony Kennedy, the 80-year-old perennial swing justice who has spent nearly three decades on the bench, could Chief Justice Roberts be emerging as the court’s new median vote?
The chief, who runs hearings with an amiable professionalism from the middle seat on the bench, may indeed find himself in the ideological centre of the court—perhaps with the left-leaning Stephen Breyer, who wrote the predatory-loans ruling—if Justice Kennedy hangs up his robe. But he has been rehearsing for this part for some time. In 2012 he infuriated the right by voting to save Obamacare from its first legal assault. He came to the health-care law’s rescue again three years later, this time with Justice Kennedy in tow. Also in 2015, he abandoned his conservative...Continue reading
Source: United States http://ift.tt/2p9BL34
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