The Flip That Will Flop?

When asked last month how the Obamacare case would be decided, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg repeated an old line: “At the Supreme Court, those who know don’t talk. And those who talk don’t know.” Well, that line doesn’t seem so apt in the era of news that’s instantly and constantly updated, 24/7.

The week before the Supreme Court announced its decision, the White House was clearly hinting to many in the media and on Capitol Hill that they expected a 5–4 opinion that would hinge on the taxing-power issue. Did someone leak? Sunday on Face the Nation, Jan Crawford of CBS News said that two reliable sources told her that Roberts originally voted, in late March, with the four conservative justices to invalidate the individual mandate. According to Crawford, Roberts suddenly changed sides some six weeks later and then resisted “a month-long desperate campaign by the conservative justices to bring him back to the fold.”
I’ve learned from my own sources that after voting to invalidate the mandate, the chief did express some skepticism about joining the four conservatives in throwing out the whole law. At the justices’ conference, there was discussion about accepting the Obama administration’s argument, which was that, if the individual mandate was removed, the provisions governing community rating and guaranteed issue of insurance would have to go too but that the rest of the law might stand. The chief justice was equivocal, though, in his views on that point.

Read more: http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/304533/flip-will-flop-john-fund