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Chief
Justice John Roberts, pictured in 2010 (AFP/File, Paul J. Richards)
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WASHINGTON
— Chief Justice John Roberts flipped late in the game on the Supreme Court
ruling on "Obamacare" and ended up writing both the majority opinion
and most of the opposing dissent, sources said Tuesday.
Supreme
Court experts described the move by Roberts, whose decisive swing vote to
uphold President Barack Obama's overhaul of the failing US health care system,
as unprecedented.
The ruling
on the reforms, Obama's signature domestic policy which aims to provide
insurance to most of the 50 million Americans who lack it, was written in such
a way that one can tell it was at first rejected, they say.
Internal
sources -- both independent and within the court's jurisdiction -- confirmed
Roberts changed his stance on the law during the three months of deliberations,
prior to delivering the stunning decision on Thursday.
"Roberts
did change his vote fairly late in the process," professor of law at the
University of Colorado at Boulder, Paul Campos, told AFP, based on his sources,
which confirmed an earlier report from US broadcaster CBS.
Joining the
ranks of four progressive judges, Roberts, who was appointed by Republican
President George W. Bush, saved Obama's legislative opus from being struck down
by the majority conservative court.
As is not
unusual, Roberts chose to write and deliver the ruling of the 5-4 majority,
reading it aloud on Thursday.
But Roberts
also wrote "three quarters" of the dissent, where the minority
explains its reasons for opposing the decision, Campos wrote on news site
Salon, citing a source "within the court with direct knowledge of the
drafting process."
"What
is very unusual is for someone to end up in a position where they end up
offering large parts of both the majority and the dissent. That's
unprecedented," Campos told AFP.
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