I just ordered the Kindle version of Jeffrey Toobin’s new book The Oath: The Obama White House and the Supreme Court
The book confirms previous reports that Roberts changed his vote in the landmark case over President Obama’s healthcare law after initially siding with the conservative justices. But Toobin reports — as others have implied — that what pushed Roberts away was the conservative justices’ insistence on striking down the entire health law.
“Scalia’s view of the justices as gladiators against the president unnerved Roberts,” Toobin writes.
The book describes Scalia as “furious” and “enraged” at Roberts — contradicting Scalia’s public statements brushing aside any tension.
Toobin’s book says Scalia has become fixated on politics — and particularly on Obama — at the expense of legal scholarship, saying frustration over the healthcare ruling helped fuel his acerbic statement dissenting from the court’s decision on Arizona’s immigration law.
“Scalia was indeed unhappy with the immigration decision, but the splenetic excess of his Arizona opinion owed far more to his failure (as yet unknown to the public) in the healthcare case,” the book says.
He also apparently interviews former Justices David Souter and Sandra Day O’Connor, who were moderate Republicans appointed to the bench and are apparently very bothered by the increasingly strident tone of other Republican-nominated justices:
Much like the Republican Party, the conservative wing of the Supreme Court has gotten staunchly more conservative over the past several years, Toobin notes. He says the old guard of recent Republican justices has been deeply upset by the Roberts court…
It had the same effect for Justice David Souter.
“He abhorred the views of Roberts and Alito. Souter didn’t like what the Republican Party — his party — was doing to the court, or to the country,” Toobin writes.
Former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor “had projected onto Roberts her idea of what a chief justice, and a Republican, should be,” Toobin writes, but her reservations grew as she watched the court overturn core pieces of her legacy. Toobin also recounts O’Connor talking to Souter about her decision to leave the court.
” ‘What makes this harder,’ O’Connor told Souter, ‘is that it’s my party that’s destroying the country.’ “
Toobin’s last book, The Nine, was good, though Jan Crawford’s book, Supreme Conflict, which covered much of the same ground and was released around the same time, was better. I’m sure this new book will be very interesting and will give me some fodder for future blog posts.
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jeremydiamond
September 21, 2012 at 11:19 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
That comes off a little creepy.
Michael Heath
September 21, 2012 at 11:35 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Ed on Jeffrey Toobin’s findings:
The modern-day Republican party hates, not disdains but outright hates the three recently retired Republican-appointed justices as well. That hatred and the frustration retired Justices O’Connor, Souter, and Stevens have for the Republican party is perfectively illustrative on why moderates like me not only don’t belong to the Republican party anymore, but hold it in deep contempt.
Unfortunately Justice O’Connor didn’t get how the GOP changed until after her vote in Bush v. Gore; which to her enormous discredit was also a partisan vote on her part for purely selfish reasons (she wanted a moderate Republican to appoint her replacement and wrongly thought then-Gov. Bush was that type of Republican).
Raging Bee
September 21, 2012 at 12:10 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I thought — and said at the time — that Roberts changed his vote at the last second for that reason.
Chiroptera
September 21, 2012 at 12:12 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
…old guard of recent Republican justices…
Heh.
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” ‘What makes this harder,’ O’Connor told Souter, ‘is that it’s my party that’s destroying the country.’ “
Yeah. During the Clinton Administration, I was reading that O’Connor was wanting to retire but was waiting for a Republican President to appoint her successor. If that’s true, then this statement comes across as tragic.
John Hinkle
September 21, 2012 at 12:27 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
You know, as Chief Justice, couldn’t Roberts have Scalia – figuratively speaking – spanked for being a trouble maker?
Then again, maybe Roberts’ flipping of his vote on the Affordable Care Act was the spanking.
Michael Heath
September 21, 2012 at 12:59 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Chiroptera writes:
I’m not an ardent student of Justice O’Connor where my own above assertion comes from a book I read years ago. But it is my understanding she retired due to the quickly declining mental health of her husband which began to arise near the end of President Clinton’s second term. That she didn’t wait it out during the Clinton years, but instead began procrastinating about retirement since she thoroughly enjoyed the job.
Bush v. Gore provided an opportunity to have a [moderate*] Republican appoint her replacement, however it’s my understanding that if Al Gore had won the election, the people who cover her seem to think she’d have had little hesitation retiring during his tenure since it really came down to her the obligation she felt towards her husband.
* It’s my understanding that Justice O’Connor was no fan of the religious right and concerned even in in the 1990s of their rise in the GOP; however her [wrong] perspective of George W. Bush in 2000 was consistent with the perspective reported in the mainstream media at the time. Which was that he was a more mainstream conservative of moderate temperament. In terms of my using ‘moderate’, it’s understandable to claim I’m misusing the term here. However it’s important to realize that ‘conservative’ meant something different in 2000 than it does just twelve years later since the Burkean style of approach which was still around in 2000 is now effectively dead unless ou refer to an establishmentarian like Barack Obama. It’s been effectively booted out of the GOP.
Pierce R. Butler
September 21, 2012 at 1:25 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Michael Heath @ # 6: … her [wrong] perspective of George W. Bush in 2000 was consistent with the perspective reported in the mainstream media at the time.
Alas, even Molly Ivins thought he’d be a weaker version of his damn daddy.
zippythepinhead
September 21, 2012 at 4:21 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Terry Gross interviewed Toobin last week:
http://www.npr.org/2012/09/17/161144225/oba
Abby Normal
September 21, 2012 at 5:06 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Thanks jeremydiamond @1, now I have an image of Kennedy lying naked in bed as copies of the First Amendment shower him like rose pedals. Those soulful blue eyes will be haunting my nightmares tonight.