Inside The Incredibly Shrinking Role Of the Supreme Court. And Why John Roberts Is O.K. With That

[rodeodance]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20071013/us_time/insidetheincrediblyshrinkingroleofthesupremecourtandwhyjohnrobertsisokwiththat;_ylt=AmUKLQig6IvX1bVexvv9yyms0NUE


Inside The Incredibly Shrinking Role Of the Supreme Court. And Why John Roberts Is O.K. With That

By DAVID VON DREHLE Sat Oct 13, 1:00 PM ET

Once a year, as another December gives way to a chill January, Chief Justice John Roberts rereads a poem published in 1749 by the great writer, moralist and late-night conversationalist Samuel Johnson. Roberts began the ritual in the 1970s as an undergraduate at Harvard, where he was one of many students taught to revere Johnson by the master biographer Walter Jackson Bate.

It is an odd pairing, not least because Roberts comes off as upbeat as a roomful of Rotarians, while Johnson, despite his vast accomplishments--including singlehandedly compiling the first comprehensive dictionary of the English language--was haunted by the inevitability of disappointment. The poem, "The Vanity of Human Wishes," is a devastating reflection on remorseless fate. "Life protracted is protracted Woe," the poet says.

........

So picture the chief at New Year's--this man who has it made, settled into his comfortable chair in his big house in the wealthy Washington suburb of Chevy Chase, Md. He's reading, maybe for the 30th or 35th time, this intricate, almost overwhelming poem about how nothing in this world can be counted on to turn out right. What's the meaning of this annual discipline? Perhaps that the conservatism of John Roberts goes much deeper than mere politics. That he favors authority and tradition while distrusting reforms and revolutions because he believes in the ancient notion that it is human nature to screw things up. The image of the Supreme Court as a great righter of wrongs, ingrained among liberals by the stirring cases of the Warren Court--school desegregation; one man, one vote; right to counsel; and so on--has no power over a judge so rooted in the conservatism of the 18th century, of Samuel Johnson and Edmund Burke, a mind-set always focused on the fact that even well-intended changes often go awry.

In which case, no one should be surprised that Roberts has turned out to be an uncompromising conservative on a court split 4 to 4 on ideology, with a fifth conservative, Justice Anthony Kennedy, deciding case after case according to his own self-dramatizing muse. When Roberts was picked to be the nation's 17th Chief Justice, he talked a great deal about the need for the fractious court to find more coherence and common ground, to wage fewer ideological spats on the pages of unnecessary separate opinions. Some wondered if this was an offer on his part to split the difference between the rival camps, but no one wonders anymore. In two terms, Roberts has not taken a single position on a high-profile case that you would not expect a darling of the conservative Federalist Society to take.

Republican Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, chairman of the Judiciary Committee in 2005, when Roberts was confirmed, was so annoyed by some of the Chief Justice's opinions last term that he threatened to investigate whether Roberts had misled the panel. But Roberts has told friends he stands by every word. He wasn't talking about compromising on ideological principles, he explains. He was talking about conducting disputes and expressing outcomes in the voice of a durable institution--not as nine voices of nine headstrong pundits.

[bemildred]

1. Look, Roberts is an idiot.

He is Clarence Thomas in intellectual drag, he hasn't had a thought of his own in his whole life.

Anyone with an honest fear of the human tendency to botch things ought to have a decent fear of unaccountable authority, which just makes it easier to make bigger botches.

[Maq]

2. his Heart or Brain problem worries Republicans

July 30, 2007, 7:16 pm
Chief Justice Hospitalized After Suffering Seizure

Chief Justice John Roberts suffered a seizure at his summer home in Port Clyde, Maine on Monday, causing a fall that resulted in minor scrapes, a Supreme Court spokesperson said. The 52-year-old Roberts, who had a similar episode in 1993, will remain hospitalized overnight. A neurological evaluation showed “no cause for concern,” the spokesperson said...

SOURCE: http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2007/07/30/chief-justice-hospitalized-after-fall/

In 1993 he would have been 38 years of age.

Maybe Roberst can hang in there till late 2008 when it will be too late for a Bush nominee to get in again. I seem to vaguely remember a follow-up story that it was a heart problem. It could have been a brain aneurism AKA Stroke.