SCOTUS is full of surprises

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June 29, 2012

SCOTUS is full of surprises

Anonymous Daily Star The Daily Star Sat Sep 22, 2012, 03:37 PM EDT

"Life," according to the mother of that noted, if fictional, philosopher Forrest Gump, "is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get."

Presidents who appoint justices to the Supreme Court would be wise to remember those words.

In 1952, when Dwight Eisenhower chose three-term California Gov. Earl Warren _ a proponent of interning Japanese citizens during World War II _ as Chief Justice of the United States, Eisenhower didn't know what he was going to get.

He got a Supreme Court that banned the segregation of public schools, required that people must be read their rights while in police custody, and instituted "one man, one vote" rulings that forced many state legislatures to reapportion their districts more fairly.

Eisenhower called Warren's appointment "the biggest damned-fool mistake I ever made."

History, however, has been far more generous in its evaluation of the Warren court.

We suspect that history will be similarly kind to the John Roberts court after the conservative chief justice appointed by President George W. Bush in 2005 joined four liberal justices Thursday in upholding President Barack Obama's health care law.

Obamacare, as The Affordable Health Care Act has come to be known, will remain the law of the land, much to the consternation of Republicans for whom the president's most singular achievement has become a rallying cry against what they see as an unwarranted government intrusion on their lives.

We applaud the ruling, and in particular, we applaud Roberts for putting his judicial ethics ahead of a political agenda. While a senator, Obama voted against Roberts' confirmation. Also, Roberts had expressed disappointment after Obama called out the Supreme Court in his 2010 State of the Union address for its Citizens United campaign finance ruling.

It took strong character for Roberts to set aside politics and affirm what he said during his confirmation hearing about the role of a judge.

"(I)t's my job to call balls and strikes," he said, "and not to pitch or bat."

Rather than look for a reason to damage Obama's re-election prospects, Roberts searched for a way to uphold the law.

He found it, not in the Commerce Clause of the Constitution as advocated by supporters of the law, but in the federal government's right to regulate and impose taxes.

In his majority opinion written for the court, Roberts cited a Nov. 13, 1789 letter "from Benjamin Franklin to M. Le Roy: ('Our new Constitution is now established ... but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.')"

Certainly, as Roberts illustrates, when it comes to what a Supreme Court justice might do, you never know what you're gonna get.