Novel alignment in health care decision unlikely to be repeated

Roberts Shows Deft Hand as Swing Vote on Health Care

By ADAM LIPTAK, NYT

WASHINGTON — Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has a favorite quotation from one of the giants who preceded him on the Supreme Court. Assessing the constitutionality of a law passed by Congress, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. once wrote, “is the gravest and most delicate duty that this court is called on to perform.”

In finding a way to uphold President Obama’s health care overhaul law on Thursday, Chief Justice Roberts performed the task with exquisite delicacy. That he did was a surprise from a judge whose rulings and background, including legal work in the administrations of President Ronald Reagan and the first President George Bush, suggested a conventionally conservative worldview.

To be sure, the chief justice considers himself the custodian of the Supreme Court’s prestige, authority and legitimacy, and he is often its voice in major cases. There was reason, then, to think he might have provided a sixth vote to uphold the law had Justice Anthony M. Kennedy joined the court’s four-member liberal wing. That would have allowed Chief Justice Roberts, the thinking went, to write a narrow, grudging majority opinion. But almost no one thought that he would provide the fifth vote, joining only the liberals, to uphold a Democratic president’s signal legislative achievement.

The court Chief Justice Roberts leads is not leaving the national spotlight. The next term already includes a major case on affirmative action in higher education, and cases on voting rights and same-sex marriage are likely to follow. All will test the chief justice’s leadership, and the novel alignment in Thursday’s case is unlikely to be repeated. In cases concerning the role of race in admissions and voting, he is likely to take his usual place with the court’s conservatives. In cases on gay rights, Justice Kennedy is likely to be the swing vote.

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