With the important stipulation that Chief Justice John Roberts's opinion is "not how I would have ruled," conservative opinion leader Charles Krauthammer pens a fairly sympathetic take on the Court's Obamacare decision, casting Roberts as a jurist caught between his legal principles and the need to protect the Supreme Court from Bush v. Gore-level backlash:
National health care has been a liberal dream for a hundred years. It is clearly the most significant piece of social legislation in decades. Roberts’s concern was that the court do everything it could to avoid being seen, rightly or wrongly, as high-handedly overturning sweeping legislation passed by both houses of Congress and signed by the president.
How to reconcile the two imperatives — one philosophical and the other institutional? Assign yourself the task of writing the majority opinion. Find the ultimate finesse that manages to uphold the law, but only on the most narrow of grounds — interpreting the individual mandate as merely a tax, something generally within the power of Congress.
Result? The law stands, thus obviating any charge that a partisan court overturned duly passed legislation. And yet at the same time the commerce clause is reined in. By denying that it could justify the imposition of an individual mandate, Roberts draws the line against the inexorable decades-old expansion of congressional power under the commerce clause fig leaf.
Law upheld, Supreme Court’s reputation for neutrality maintained. Commerce clause contained, constitutional principle of enumerated powers reaffirmed.
There's a message in Roberts's decision for proponents of health care repeal, Krauthammer concludes: "Your job, not mine. I won’t make it easy for you." And despite the ire directed at Roberts in some quarters, that does seem to be the message most Republicans heard out of the Court yesterday.