As the Supreme Court winds down a term marked by momentous decisions, two things stand out from the historic session.

One, the court’s reputation for conservatism under Chief Justice John Roberts has eroded — at least to a degree.


And two, the gloves came off, with the justices hurling especially nasty words at each other, shattering the illusion that they are all good friends.

The string of wins for liberals was undeniable. Three years after saving President Barack Obama’s signature legislative achievement from a potentially devastating blow, Roberts led the court to a 6-3 ruling Thursday rejecting a new legal challenge that could have upended Obamacare by denying insurance subsidies to Americans in 34 states.

Gay rights advocates also scored a landmark victory Friday as the court effectively made same-sex marriage rights the law of the land, holding in a far-reaching, 5-4 decision that the Constitution prohibits states from denying marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples.

And in an opinion that would have drawn far more attention in a less action-packed year, the court ruled Thursday, 5-4, that proof of intentional bias is not required in housing discrimination cases. The Obama administration and civil rights groups were so fearful of losing on that point that they maneuvered for years to keep such disputes about so-called “disparate impact” off the court’s docket.

The series of wins had some liberals conceding that warnings about the Roberts Court being a conservative juggernaut look to have been exaggerated.

“There’s still plenty for liberals to be worried about, but I do think that in the last few years of the Roberts Court, most —certainly not all — of the big decisions have come out in a way that liberals could celebrate,” said University of California at Los Angeles law professor Adam Winkler.

Some conservatives see a similar phenomenon, but dispute how pronounced or permanent it may be.

“It’s probably a pullback in the rate of conservative trending, more than a shift that tells us we’ve got a more liberal court,” said Kevin Walsh, a University of Richmond law professor and former clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia. “You can’t always use a single term as a unit of analysis.”

Likewise, not all liberals are convinced that the Roberts Court has turned over a new leaf.

“A lot of people who just tuned in yesterday might not realize this court is a f***n disaster. #BlindSquirrels,” former Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) wrote on Twitter Friday.

Some courtwatchers fretted that much of the recent dialogue between the justices devolved to invective and personal barbs. Scalia pulled no punches, blasting the majority decision in the same-sex marriage case as a “judicial Putsch,” and leveling attacks that seemed directed squarely at Justice Anthony Kennedy, who penned the court’s majority opinion.

Scalia called Kennedy’s opinion “often profoundly incoherent” and declared that its “style is as pretentious as its content is egotistic.” At another juncture, Scalia ridiculed Kennedy’s language as sounding like an aphorism from a fortune cookie.

Justice Samuel Alito also bitterly accused the majority of advancing a “deep and perhaps irremediable corruption of our legal culture’s conception of constitutional interpretation.”

One prominent Supreme Court historian said Friday that such language signaled a growing chilliness and perhaps even animosity between the justices.

“This has the ring of the 1940s to it, where the court was badly fractured and there was no love lost between several of the justices,” University of Texas professor Lucas Powe said. “Scalia has been acting as if he really wants to be on Fox and Friends.”

Walsh said he also sees greater tension on the court, but “would not hang all that on Scalia.”

“It does really seem as if this term has revealed a lot more personal dissension among the justices,” Walsh said, pointing to the sparring between various justices during oral arguments on a death penalty case — one of those expected to be resolved on Monday at the court’s final sitting of the term. “In some ways, it does seem personal in a way it hasn’t typically.”

Many lawyers said they believe the bitterness of some of the opinions and exchanges causes heartburn for Roberts, who is eager to have the court seen as an institution not consumed by the food fights that often break out in Congress and between Congress and the White House.

It was notable that Scalia’s opinion ridiculing Kennedy’s writing in the same-sex marriage case was endorsed by Thomas and Alito, but not by Roberts. In fact, Roberts did not sign on to any of his colleagues’ dissents. Scalia and Thomas joined Roberts’ opinion, but Alito did not.

“I would be shocked if Roberts ever got near the invective that Scalia uses,” Powe said.

Regarding tone, some prominent liberals also appreciated Roberts’ restraint — and reasoning — in his dissent in the same-sex marriage case, even though he ultimately rejected the notion of a constitutional right to marry for gays and lesbian couples.

“The two best opinions Roberts has written on the court are his opinion in the Obamacare and gay marriage cases,” said Walter Dellinger, who served as acting solicitor general in the Clinton administration. “While I don’t agree with his bottom line in the same-sex marriage case, he wrote the most respectful and best-reasoned argument for allowing the democratic process to run its course. None of the advocates defending bans on same-sex marriage at the court came close to articulating as good an argument as Chief Justice Roberts.”

Dellinger said he was struck by the difference in tone between Alito and Roberts. “Alito could barely contain his anger and foresees people opposing gay rights being marginalized and discriminated against themselves, whereas Roberts speaks with great sympathy of the desire of gay people to be married,” Dellinger said.

If the court has drifted left a bit, it’s unclear how much credit — or blame — Roberts deserves for that development. He dissented in the both the gay marriage case and the fair housing case, so it’s hard to attribute the majority’s rulings to him.

But Dellinger, who had previously scoffed at the notion that Roberts was a more moderate justice than Scalia, Thomas or Alito, said the way the chief justice framed his opinions this week gives that notion some merit.

“The respectful tone the chief justice takes towards gay rights in his dissent, coupled with the fact he gave the best articulation of the theory behind the Affordable Care Act, means I think this is a more pronounced moderation on the part of Chief Justice Roberts than we have seen in any previous term,” Dellinger said.

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