John Roberts was supposed to be a big win for conservatives when he became not only a Supreme Court Justice but the Chief Justice. But since being an enabler for Obamacare he has as often as not sided with the liberal justices on the Supreme Court and in a not insignificant way.
Dan McLaughlin blames it on lack of courage:
The chief is the opposite of Anthony Kennedy, whose sin was the hubris to maximize the power of the federal courts and his own votes in nearly every case. Roberts remains what he was before his appointment, a conventional conservative legal theorist who believes in many of the doctrines and judicial philosophies one would hear at any Federalist Society gathering.But courage is lacking. Over and over again, Roberts has failed to follow through on the rule of law. His defenders point to his big-picture vision of judicial modesty and incrementalism: that conservatives should avoid big, wrenching moves, and build small victories in doctrine today that will accumulate to larger ones tomorrow. But in law, as in politics, tomorrow never comes without courage today.
Maybe. To be honest I no longer care to figure out what his motivation is. What matters are the results and his have been just short of abysmal. He's a huge disappointment. Go figure, another Bush appointee who turned out to be a squishy conservative, or pro-establishment. That's a typical feature of a Bush appointee (and I mean any Bush). Yes, there are exceptions but that's the problem - they're exceptions.
