“John Roberts on judicial doctrine”

Sandy Levinson has this interesting post on Balkinization, which not only mentions Bush v. Gore, but also may shed light on how WRTL could be decided. A snippet: “The acerbity of Roberts’s dissent [in the death penalty cases last week] suggests that he may be giving up on his professed desire to overcome the fragmentation of the current Court. So maybe he is on his way to becoming more like Thomas or Scalia. The ‘Roberts Court’ (which is really, right now, the Stevens-Kennedy Court) is clearly a work in progress, not least because of the consequences of the 2008 presidential and Senate elections for who will succeed the now-87-year-old John Paul Stevens and, possibly, the already septagenerians Scalia, Ginsburg, and Kennedy.” My sense from oral argument in WRTL was much the same as Sandy’s, which is why I still think the outcome in WRTL may come down to Justice Kennedy’s views of stare decisis.

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