Chief Justice Roberts: Will he be Trump's friend or foe?

[corbe]

Chief Justice Roberts: Will he be Trump's friend or foe?

 Richard Wolf  , USA TODAY Published 12:41 p.m. ET Jan. 19, 2017 | Updated 5 hours ago



WASHINGTON — Before the first votes were cast for president in last year's primaries and caucuses, Donald Trump picked a fight with John Roberts.

"Justice Roberts turned out to be an absolute disaster," Trump said a year ago, dropping the title of chief justice that makes Roberts first among equals on the Supreme Court. "He turned out to be an absolute disaster, because he gave us Obamacare."

Shortly after noon Friday,  the 17th chief justice of the United States will deliver the oath of office to the 45th president of the United States. It could be the start of a match made in heaven — or the high point of a rocky relationship.

If Trump gets to replace more than one justice during his presidency, it would cement the court's conservative majority and Roberts' place at its helm, an Election Day gift that could have been coal if Hillary Clinton had won the White House.

If, on the other hand, potential policy forays such as a ban on Muslim immigration or ethics entanglements involving Trump's real estate empire prompt constitutional challenges, Roberts' court could become the final arbiter of Trump's fate.

"He is unlikely to look favorably upon actions of the Trump administration that might really run afoul of well-established principles of our Constitution and the way our government normally operates," says Brianne Gorod, chief counsel at the liberal Constitutional Accountability Center, who led a 10-year review of Roberts' record last year.

While Trump has vowed to nominate a doctrinaire conservative in the next few weeks to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia, Roberts' brand of conservatism over 11 years has been harder to define.

He sided with the court's majority in the landmark Citizens United case that allowed for unlimited independent corporate spending on elections, and he wrote the decision striking down the key section of the Voting Rights Act. But he twice rescued President Obama's signature Affordable Care Act from annihilation, a task that Trump and the Republican Congress have vowed to take on.

Now a chief justice who endured a testy relationship with Obama faces a potentially stormy one with Trump, who prefers bold strokes to Roberts' minimalist brand of jurisprudence.

TWO VERY DIFFERENT STYLES

The two conservative leaders could not be more different. Where Trump is bellicose, Roberts is circumspect. Given various opportunities to comment on Trump's rhetoric or congressional Republicans' refusal to fill Scalia's seat throughout 2016, the chief justice demurred.


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http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/01/19/chief-justice-roberts-president-trump-oath-swearing-in/96735156/

[corbe]

The two conservative leaders could not be more different.

   I stopped reading right there, now we know where @TomSea gets his ideas about Conservatism-USA Today.

[jmyrlefuller]

Roberts, like Trump, is a corporatist. Furthermore, he is a minimalist. He will stand aside and let Trump do what Trump wants to do.

Do not expect him to stand in the way if Trump goes wild.

[InHeavenThereIsNoBeer]

"Chief Justice Roberts: Will he be Trump's friend or foe?"

I certainly hope not.

[montanajoe]

The CJ is quite aware of his role and it is to be neither a friend or a foe to members of the other branches of government...

[EasyAce]

I prefer a Supreme Court justice, Chief or otherwise, be a friend to the Constitution way before
he or she is a friend to a given president. Even if it means opinions---for the majority, concurring with
the majority, or dissenting from the majority---contrary to a given president's wishes, if said wishes
do violence to the Constitution.