Sometimes keeping your skirts clean might involve jumping over a mud puddle and into oncoming traffic:
Chief Justice John Roberts surprised practically everyone by supplying the swing vote to uphold the constitutionality of the requirement in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (PPACA or Obamacare) that Americans buy health insurance. The reasoning of his decision is equally surprising. He resorted to semantic gamesmanship and suspect logic to find the law constitutional. The artifice of his opinion confirms that he was driven by a desire to reach a result, however suspect the reasoning, that he thought would protect both the Supreme Court and himself from charges of political partisanship.
"It's a living document, right, John?"
The Ineluctable Law of Unintended Consequences at work:
A decision made for the political benefit of the chief justice and the Court by side-stepping the law, perverting logic, and engaging in word games is not a solid basis for respecting the Court as an institution. Roberts’s effort may result in the very damage to the Court’s reputation and standing that he sought to avoid.
