The Supreme Court will take to the bench at 10am. It is possible that they will announce their decision on the Affordable Care Act shortly thereafter, although I am hearing that Thursday is more likely. You can find out quickly by opening a window for SCOTUSBlog and then launching their live chat module. The way they do this is that the cases are announced by reverse-seniority, meaning that if any decision was written by Elena Kagan, it will be announced first. Then Sotomayor, etc… Chief Justice Roberts is considered to have the most seniority even though he’s relatively new to the Court.
The Affordable Care Act decision could be written by anyone. If Chief Justice Roberts is in the majority, he gets to decide who will write it. If he is in the minority, then the most senior Justice in the majority gets to decide. If Roberts joined with Kennedy to uphold the law, he probably wrote the decision himself. If he joined Kennedy to strike it down, he probably let Kennedy write it. If Kennedy split from Roberts to uphold the law, he also probably wrote the decision himself. So, the most likely authors are Roberts or Kennedy, which means we won’t hear the decision first.
Even though I kind of think the decision will come Thursday, I am feeling a bit jittery. Knowing that my whole life can change and the whole nature of our government can change in less than fifteen minutes is unnerving.
The MT campaign finance case is summarily reversed.
So Anthony Kennedy is still the dumbest person alive? And I say that because we already knew how the other four clowns would vote. And how can they summarily reverse something with out listening to oral arguments? How often does that happen?
The Court holds that the Eighth Amendment forbids a scheme of life in prison without possibility of parole for juveniles.
5-4, decision written by Kagan.
Apparently, Alito is pissed off about this ruling and is reading extensively from his dissent (which is unusual).
A state that cannot imprison a ten year old for life is no state at all.
Freedom isn’t free.
of course he’s pissed off. They don’t call him “Strip Search Sammy” for nothin’.
If only he’d have a thrombosis or a massive stroke that rendered him a vegetable. What a glorious day that would be.
Roberts wrote the healthcare decision. I am sooooo nervous. Was hoping author was Kennedy–I don’t even know why but I thought that was a better sign somehow.
We shouldn’t have to read tea leaves on something that is a matter of life and death for so many of us.
Nothing is certain, but I take Roberts’ authorship as a good sign.
Here’s why.
If the Court was basically locked at 4-4 with Kennedy in the balance, it is highly likely that he would be offered the chance to write the opinion for the conservatives.
But if the case is 6-3 to uphold, meaning Roberts doesn’t need Kennedy’s vote, he’d probably take ownership of the opinion for himself.
There really wasn’t much chance that anyone but those two would write the opinion. And if Kennedy were the author, I’d feel pretty doomed.
I”m not sure I understand your point of view here. Can you explain? I’m dense.
Okay. Let me be a little clearer.
We are almost certain that Alito, Scalia, and Thomas will vote to destroy the ACA in part or en toto.
Roberts and Kennedy, however, are the wildcards.
Here are three likeliest outcomes.
5-4 to uphold the law. (Kennedy with the liberals)
6-3 to uphold the law. (Roberts and Kennedy with the liberals)
5-4 to kill the law. (Kennedy with the conservatives)
The ruling could be more complicated depending on issues of severability, but that’s the basic framework we are looking at.
Now, if Roberts is going to stay in the conservative camp, that eliminates the 6-3 scenario above. But, as you can see, the 6-3 scenario is the only one where Kennedy isn’t the deciding vote.
If Kennedy is the deciding vote, it is very likely that he wrote the opinion. You can maybe say his authorship gives a 50-50 chance.
But Roberts authorship is a little more likely if he’s with the liberals in a 6-3 decision.
And to go over this a little more, since you claim to be dense, my reasoning is based on how opinions are assigned.
Go back and look at the three scenarios above.
If Chief Justice Roberts is in the majority then he gets to assign the opinion. If he is in the minority, then the most senior member of the majority gets to assign the opinion. In the scenario where Kennedy sides with the liberals in a 5-4 decision, Kennedy would be the most senior and could assign the opinion to himself. In other words, the liberals don’t have to woo him. He can choose to write the opinion for the majority simply by siding with the liberals.
This makes it highly likely that Roberts would grant Kennedy the right to write the opinion for the conservatives, too.
In other words, if Roberts wrote the decision, he did Kennedy a discourtesy and kind of took his vote for granted.
Perhaps he did that, but I take his authorship (which is still uncertain, by the way) as a good sign for these reasons.
Thank you for detailing the logic that way. I get it.
I shall cling to this thread of optimism for at least the next few minutes. Thanks 🙂
This is some interesting analysis Booman, you should post it as a seperate FP post.
Ok, thanks Booman. Again, I think it is so wrong that we are even in the position of having to wonder and worry and fret over this.
I am probably hyper emotional about it since I did so much work on this legislation. I spent between 20-40 hours per week organizing for the duration. When you hear story after story about how people’s lives are made so difficult by a broken health care system you know just how high the stakes are.
Not sure I agree…though we’ll find out soon 🙂
Basically the decision to overturn would be so obviously partisian, Kennedy might want to hide in the background on this one. Whereas Roberts et al might just be less likely to care how it looks.
It’s possible, but I am a little more optimistic. I just wrote a long comment in this thread that explains my reasoning. But to look at it from the point of view of wanting to be low-profile, I see a stronger argument for Roberts.
Many people have observed that Roberts would be unlikely to get to the left of Kennedy on this, but might join him in siding with the liberals. In other words, he wants cover from the right.
You might think that would make him more likely to let Kennedy take the fall by assigning him the opinion. But I think he would want to explain himself. If he can get Kennedy’s vote, that provides some cover, and his opinion can do the rest.
As for Kennedy, he probably could have written this opinion no matter what. It was almost in his control. The only way he doesn’t write it, it seems to me, is if Roberts wanted to explain why he was voting with the liberals.
Booman – I think that Roberts might want to protect the integrity of the court (now at a pretty low standing with the public). A 5-4 partisan ruling on ACA would be very bad for the court in both the short and long term! If he is protective of the court, he’d want at least a 6-3 opinion, but I doubt he could get anything more than that.
Color me a little skeptical on that point.
I am not a lawyer nor even a particularly close SCOTUS watcher, but as it was explained to me, we don’t actually know that Roberts authored the opinion. As I understand it, that’s just speculation based on the idea that Kennedy has already authored one complicated opinion and therefore the Chief Justice probably took on some of the workload (and the case against the ACA is one of the few left). But we won’t know for sure until Thursday.
Arizona immigration law mostly struck down in a 5-3 decision, opinion written by Kennedy, with Kagan having recused herself.
Well this is good news!
Great news. Now the trick is getting law enforcement in Arizona to notice the ruling…
Romney was just deplaning in Phoenix as the AZ decision came down. With his touting the Papers Please law as a model for the Country it’ll be interesting to see his position on the decision today.
Of course he could stand there at the podium in Phoenix and say no comment. Ha!
yeah, but they left the Gestapo “where are your papers” part intact. That sucks.
My understanding is that they can now only ask for papers if the person is stopped for another reason, rather than just because they “look illegal.”
That can still be abused (and will) but it seems the xenophobes lost most of what they wanted.
and as Booman mentioned, this isn’t good news for Shitt Money. The Latinos know who’s been harrassing them, and who just provided some respite via executive order.
Also, this doesn’t determine the issue permanently. That provision of the law was put on hold prior to going into effect via preliminary injunction; and it’s still subject to being voided if a trial on the merits, based on the law’s application to real-life cases, provides sufficient evidence of disparate impact to hold it unconstitutional.
SCOTUS rejects corporate campaign spending limits.
Note the article mentions “labor union interests”. I wonder if anyone in progressive Bloggo world will take note of this– or just rant about the eveels of corporate spending?
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_SUPREME_COURT_CAMPAIGN_FINANCE_MONTANA?SITE=AP&SECTION
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