Roberts is pretty open in his opinions. I doubt that his private thoughts differ much from what he writes in his dissents or concurrences. Unless you mean court gossip, which is probably at a minimum today since we still don't know who leaked the Dobbs opinion.

I feel the structure of the US since the New Deal is an aberration, and the court has simply refrained from doing inconvenient things, contorting itself to avoid doing disruptive inconvenient things. That wasnt a partisan view in my world, just an obscure one, until the only ones willing to match that view were extremely partisan.

This court has expressed and shown that it wont refrain from doing disruptive, inconvenient things and I haven't found any of its decisions to be contortions or surprising, after having read those decisions

I often feel like the narrative is the opposite of what I perceive, the media and people that want a different outcome say “they’re legislating from the bench!” when I see the prior court acting like a super congress with entire multipronged frameworks, and this court saying “yeaaaaahhh voters and elected representatives should decide that” whether there is a consensus failure or not, forcing consensus to be made where it was avoided indefinitely. I just dont see that as extreme, extreme would have been it using its privilege to say “yeah that's banned now across the whole republic” and they dont do that, its all quite professional

I dont know man, they are just waiting for someone to bring challenges to every remaining vestige of the New Deal and its expanded interpretation of interstate commerce, given that the 1930s court struck down most of the New Deal until it was threatened, I dont really find finishing the job to be so extreme, just unfamiliar because we were all raised post-New Deal

Almost nobody alive today remembers America before the New Deal. We've lost the institutional memory of what works and doesn't work in that environment. It is very much a radical position to undo the New Deal consensus.

yes, but if you study US history its like a distortion field has been pulled up, where the President that got the New Deal passed is heralded in all history books for every action he ever did, while in reality most of his New Deal got struck down by the courts and he threatened to pack the court with his people. Like... what? And everything that's left over has been used to control all facets of life, subjugate all states with an interpretation of all commerce being interstate commerce, with any state level autonomy being a gift from Congress if they remembered to include an intrastate exemption

Its a "federal government" by name alone as there is no federalism left. Federalism could be interesting. It will have redundancies, wild differences. But that's the actual country we herald in our history books while we've done something else for the last 100 years.

The court has even expressed interest in going back further: revisiting the insular cases - the status of many of our territories and whether we should possess them at all - for reasons I find extremely universally agreeable, nowadays. If you read the SCOTUS decisions from 1901 they are super racist reasons why we have our territories. The only reason people would disagree is because they either haven't read them or they want to avoid the inconvenience. The constitution doesn't say "if its inconvenient ignore these articles, amendments and don't interpret me". Self determination is decided by the people of the territory in coordination with Congress.

so our radical court is going to undo racist rulings and disrupt an American colonizer streak? bring the cases, the challenge to a territory's status will probably even come from the left once people catch on with the most productive way to operate with this court

I get it, its a paradoxical standard, yes, its radical to do something we're all unfamiliar with. yes, a political entity with the adjective radical is a radical political entity. but are we using this in the colloquial way of illegitimate? no, not at all.

I don’t understand what you’re saying. What’s wrong with the current interpretation of interstate commerce? What is that interpretation?

Are you arguing for the dismantling of Social Security? Medicare?

Are you arguing for Congress letting go of US territories to become their own sovereign countries? What if they want to remain part of the U.S.?

a narrower interpretation of the interstate commerce clause would disable many aspects of the federal governments agency system and require a different legal rationale from Congress if the people want to continue them, I don’t know how those specific examples you mention fall into that and it isn’t an argument for anything specific except an interpretation more congruent with federalism

I’m arguing for more durable consensus. Look at the accession process of Texas versus a territory with Hispanics, Pacific Islanders or Asians, and see how many steps were done in the former versus how many were skipped in the latter. Do those steps and accept any outcome. I’m not arguing for any specific outcome of an areas status.

>I feel the structure of the US since the New Deal is an aberration, and the court has simply refrained from doing inconvenient things, contorting itself to avoid doing disruptive inconvenient things. That wasnt a partisan view in my world, just an obscure one, until the only ones willing to match that view were extremely partisan.

>This court has expressed and shown that it wont refrain from doing disruptive, inconvenient things and I haven't found any of its decisions to be contortions or surprising, after having read those decisions

You mean like this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lochner_era

The immediate period before the new deal era that is universally ridiculed by every member of the Court today?

What I expect the court to do is leave absences of law, because Congress or the states neglected to create durable consensus.

Its a predictive quality, instead of one based on feelings. Until I bring a case myself, I’m not arguing or advocating for anything, just listening far better than someone using their energy to protest something they have no control over.

Your example, although I consider it a strawman, I think also shows that even what people believe about this current court is not unique. If they dont like this court, they really wouldnt have liked that court.

I've never understood this position from him. I'll admit that I've never read anything he's written about it so I'm probably speaking out of turn, and that there is a surprising death to this view that I'm not seeing because I haven't seriously looked into it, at least not from his perspective.

That said, I'm not sure where someone could come to the conclusion that the court should remain neutral when courts, especially the Supreme Court, mark the point where a dispute is resolved not in terms of how to follow the existing law, but why the existing law is the way it is, and whether it should be patchedto reflect a new understanding of why our values are what they are. The "correct" place to do this is of course in the legislature, but it moves on a comparatively glacial time frame and in some cases can never come to a clear actionable position on issues in a timely manner, while harms are actively taking place without remedy.

The neutral stance is implicitly conservative, disregarding changes in our understanding of why we value what we value, and instead focusing on mechanical details of how to paper over ever widening disparities, constantly pointing at the legislature to sort them out. If the court had the power to force legislature to come to a decision one way or the l other it would be different I suppose, but this would of course put the Court under the legislature, defeating the purpose of separated powers.

I acknowledge that the issue is quite complex. still from the outside, to put it bluntly, his stance looks like a rationalization to shirk an essential responsibility he has been uniquely entrusted with.

> maintain respect as a neutral party

It seems like most of their headline-worthy actions have been reversing the times that the court did not act as a neutral party in the past.

>> this Court is going to get one of the thicker chapters in the history books with all the precedents they have, or expected to, overturn

This is false. The Roberts court has overruled previous decisions less often than previous courts, not more often. It will have one of the thinnest chapters in the history books, not one of the thickest.

The Burger court overruled more decisions from 1969 to 1975 than the Roberts court has since it began in 2005. The Warren court has the thickest chapter in the history books. It overruled decisions at a higher rate than even the Burger court.

I am guessing that the real difference is that you agree with the major decisions of the Warren, Burger, and Rehnquist courts, and disagree with the major decisions of the Roberts court.

Nah, went through what 18 years of relatively little rocking the boat in overturning precedence and then overturning roe v wade and now the chevron defense in 2-3 years? Maybe the courts history as a whole has less overturning but these past few years have been markedly faster

>> and then overturning roe v wade

Sure, that helps make my point, thanks.

Planned Parenthood v. Casey overturned parts of Roe v. Wade. That was in 1992 under the Rehnquist court. If overturning precedence is bad, the Rehnquist court is bad for overturning parts of Roe v. Wade.

> Sure, that helps make my point, thanks.

Don’t believe it did. Feel free to explain. You know I’m referring to Dobbs and the implied chevron defense overturning in a short period after that political makeup of the court fundamentally changed.