How the Roberts Court disguises its conservatism.

By Barry Friedman and Dahlia Lithwick
Updated Monday, Oct. 4, 2010, at 6:41 AM ET

It's dark and silent. Reporters trickle into the grand ceremonial room from a door on the left; like everyone, they've been instructed that no recording devices of any sort are allowed. A clutch of spectators, some of whom have been waiting for hours, enters at the rear. At 10 a.m. on the dot, never earlier and never later, the marshal utters her incantation: "The honorable, the chief justice and the associate justices of the Supreme Court of the United States." Then they file, from behind the velvet curtain, wearing long black robes; they sit behind a tall dais, sipping water from silver cups. Silent footmen glide back and forth bearing thick books.

For the justices, it's a typical oral argument day, but if you didn't know better, you'd think you were watching the initiation into Harry Potter's school for wizards, Hogwarts; or, better yet, the Penn and Teller show at the MGM Grand in Vegas. Magic, mystery, and hush everywhere you look.


The metaphor is more than apt. There's another, newer, layer of illusion at work at the highest court of the land. Under the stewardship of its boyish chief justice, John Roberts, the court has taken the law for a sharp turn to the ideological right, while at the same time masterfully concealing it. Virtually every empirical study confirms this rightward turn. Yet recent public opinion polls indicate Americans continue to see a bench that is, if anything, a wee bit too liberal.

How to explain the justices shoving the law rightward, while everyone thinks it is dead center or too far left? The answer is that Roberts is a brilliant magician. He and his four fellow conservative justices have worked some classic illusionist tricks to distract us from seeing the truth. Roberts is likely the first chief justice to understand that the message matters as much as the outcome. He has played his role with consummate skill, allowing the law to shape-shift before our very eyes, even as he and his fellow conservatives claim that nothing is happening.

more

http://www.slate.com/id/2269715/

Never forget.

The central premise of this article is that Roberts is a committed, semi-extremist conservative. Gee, who would have ever guessed? I find this proposition no more earth shattering than "the sun is really hot" or "water feels wet". What the author completely misses is that Roberts owns no newspaper or cable network or radio network. He does not control the flow of information about the decisions once they are put into the public arena. The real story here, which the author misses, is the role of our modern, corporatist media in the area of public opinion. Why do so many Americans believe the court is a "wee bit" too liberal? That is far more interesting and consequential than the authors non-revelation that Roberts is *gasp* a conservative and is behaving as one on the SC.