John Roberts, you are chief justice, not chief of PR

[DonViejo]

By Jennifer Rubin October 4 at 10:30 AM

The Supreme Court heard oral argument Tuesday in the controversial gerrymandering case Gill v. Whitford, which poses the question of whether gerrymandering for partisan, not racial, reasons can be unconstitutional. There is a legitimate concern that there is no objective standard by which lower courts could apply whatever rule the court comes up with and, worse, that every redistricting in every state would become a lawsuit.

However, as I did in the challenges to the Affordable Care Act, I find very problematic Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.’s notion that the court should avoid acting when its reputation would be harmed. He told the litigants during oral argument:

We will have to decide in every case whether the Democrats win or the Republicans win. So it’s going to be a problem here across the board. And if you’re the intelligent man on the street and the Court issues a decision, and let’s say the Democrats win, and that person will say: Well, why did the Democrats win? And the answer is going to be because EG was greater than 7 percent, where EG is the sigma of party X wasted votes minus the sigma of party Y wasted votes over the sigma of party X votes plus party Y votes. And the intelligent man on the street is going to say that’s a bunch of baloney. It must be because the Supreme Court preferred the Democrats over the Republicans. … And that is going to cause very serious harm to the status and integrity of the decisions of this Court in the eyes of the country.

Wait. Especially for a “conservative” justice, where does it say in the Constitution that the court should “ignore constitutional violations if it makes the court less respected by people who don’t read opinions“? This is an entirely illegitimate concern that rests on three fundamental errors.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2017/10/04/john-roberts-you-are-chief-justice-not-chief-of-pr/?utm_term=.f0dbab21edb2

[Fred Sanders]

1. The Fox News Court of America, complete with inane propaganda dressed up better.

[procon]

2. Is Roberts also saying that Dems shouldn't "win" (so much for blind justice, eh?)

because he is a conservative and it would harm his image as head of the court and hurt the Republican brand if their gerrymandering policies were found to be unconstitutional. If Roberts is more concerned about his Republican bonafides, then he's already politicizing the court by making decisions based on his own ideological viewpoint of one party over the other.

[oasis]

3. What a joke that turkey has turned out to be.

[Raster]

5. he's doing just what he was installed to do...

....IMHO, His SCOTUS tenancy was one of the main objectives of the cheney*/bush* electoral coup, that and keeping an *inconvenient* President Gore out of the Oval Office.

[uponit7771]

4. Beyond asinine position of Justice

[Mr. Ected]

6. Is the American Experiment dead in the water?

It seems that every unwritten rule has been breached. The children have stolen the game ball from the adults.

The Founding Fathers would lay siege to the country we've become.