Bloomberg: Roberts Will Struggle to Hold Center as Court’s Makeup Shifts

Chief Justice John Roberts’ efforts to rein in his conservative colleagues and slow walk major changes in U.S. law will be more difficult after the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Roberts, 65, begins his 16th term leading the court on Oct. 5, and has recently emerged as its ideological center. Mostly voting with conservatives, he has sometimes crossed over to vote with his liberal colleagues and at other times restrained his fellow Republican-appointed justices, creating narrow rulings that avoided sweeping legal proclamations.

But without the liberal icon, conservatives will hold a two-seat majority when oral arguments start and a three-seat cushion once a new justice is seated, barring unforeseen developments. The court’s new composition will make it harder for Roberts to strike a balance between competing factions. …

Commentators going back to the founders have recognized that the court must rely on its reputation in order to be an effective branch of government. The Supreme Court has “neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment,” Alexander Hamilton wrote of the judiciary.

Roberts’ institutional concerns were on display during the 2019 term, Common Cause attorney Sylvia Albert said.

He was the justice most often in the majority, landing there in 96% of the court’s decided cases and in all but one of the 5-4 or equivalent decisions, a Bloomberg Law analysis shows.

“Roberts really tried to thread the needle between the conservative and liberal sides of the bench,” Albert said.