A Bloomberg report detailed how the latest US Supreme Court decisions has changed after making groundbreaking decisions on the nation's healthcare law and gay rights. Several industry pundits credited just one person who has shifted the majority of the top justices' views on several controversial issues like the campaign finance limits, government-sponsored prayer and racial preferences: Chief Justice John Roberts.
Chief counsel Elizabeth Wydra of the Constitutional Accountability Center, who is a frequent critic of the Roberts court, said "When he's got the votes, it seems Roberts can move the law exactly as quickly as he wants."
It has been feared that as the court approaches its final month-and-a-half of its term, Roberts could lead the majority into voting on contraception, abortion protests and separation of powers.
In his ninth year as chief justice, the 59 year-old justice reportedly presided over legal shifts on several issues. The Supreme Court has since dropped longstanding legal protections for minorities in the nation, allowed corporations and unions to spend on political campaigns, and endowed companies more power to force arbitration of employee and consumer grievances. Moreover, the Supreme Court has voted on shifting power away from the federal government to states. Bloomberg said majority of the rulings were made with the five-justice majority in the nine-member top court, which are Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.
Professor Brian Fitzpatrick at Vanderbilt Law School in Nashville told Bloomberg that one trademark of the Roberts court is that the majority has stopped short of directly overturning a precedent in each case.
"It'd be much more lasting if they'd just overturn some precedents now and again. It's moved fairly slowly," Fitzpatrick added.
On the other hand, the Roberts court has not been touted as liberal, even by public standards, Bloomberg said. A Pew Research Center released on May 6 revealed that 31% of the respondents deemed the Supreme Court liberal, with 25% of the total respondents calling the court conservative. Bloomberg believes that the public perception might have been influenced by the top court's recent decisions on gay marriage amd healthcare.
