The Oath: The Obama White House and The Supreme Court

Toobin, Jeffrey

ISBN 10: 0449013677 ISBN 13: 9780449013670

Publisher: Random House Audio, 2012

Synopsis

From the prizewinning author of The Nine, a gripping insider's account of the momentous ideological war between the John Roberts Supreme Court and the Obama administration.

From the moment John Roberts, the chief justice of the United States, blundered through the Oath of Office at Barack Obama's inauguration, the relationship between the Supreme Court and the White House has been confrontational. Both men are young, brilliant, charismatic, charming, determined to change the course of the nation—and completely at odds on almost every major constitutional issue. One is radical; one essentially conservative. The surprise is that Obama is the conservative—a believer in incremental change, compromise, and pragmatism over ideology. Roberts—and his allies on the Court—seek to overturn decades of precedent: in short, to undo the ultimate victory FDR achieved in the New Deal.
   This ideological war will crescendo during the 2011-2012 term, in which several landmark cases are on the Court's docket—most crucially, a challenge to Obama's controversial health-care legislation. With four new justices joining the Court in just five years, including Obama's appointees Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, this is a dramatically—and historically—different Supreme Court, playing for the highest of stakes.
   No one is better positioned to chronicle this dramatic tale than Jeffrey Toobin, whose prize-winning bestseller The Nine laid bare the inner workings and conflicts of the Court in meticulous and entertaining detail. As the nation prepares to vote for President in 2012, the future of the Supreme Court will also be on the ballot.

About this title

Review:

A Letter from the Author

Think John Roberts has discovered his inner moderate? Don’t bet on it.

It is true, of course, that Chief Justice Roberts’s vote in the health-care case saved the Affordable Care Act – and perhaps Barack Obama’s presidency as well. At the end of the Supreme Court’s last term, Roberts joined with the Court’s four liberals – Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan – to uphold the constitutionality of the health-care reform law. It was the first time ever that the Chief joined with the liberal quartet in a major case. It’s also probably the last.

Roberts has the advantage of a long-term perspective. At fifty-seven years old, Roberts will likely still be Chief Justice when Sasha and Malia Obama become eligible to succeed their father in the White House. Roberts’s decision in the health-care case reflected his understanding of his place in the history of the Court. In terms of public attention, the health-care case – known as National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius – formed a trilogy with Bush v. Gore (2000) and Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010). In those first two cases, five Republican appointees to the Court rendered decisions which provided dramatic benefits to the Republican Party – the first, by installing George W. Bush as president, and the second, by creating a campaign finance system that favors the GOP. In the health-care case, Roberts had to ask himself whether the five Republicans on the Court were going to destroy the central achievement of a Democratic president.

Roberts chose not to go that far. His Republican allies, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, overplayed their hand. They sought to invalidate the law it its entirety, not just the controversial individual mandate. If Roberts had joined them, the Chief would have stirred volcanic partisan outrage and placed the Supreme Court at the center of the 2012 election. Instead, he chose a novel ground – Congress’s constitutional power to levy taxes – to uphold the law. He established new limits on the Commerce Clause, which is usually the principal means for Congress to regulate the economy. He advanced the conservative cause in the long run by disappointing conservatives in the short run.

Chief Justice Roberts also gave himself a political free hand for the foreseeable future. He can be as conservative as he likes and he has insulated himself from criticism for partisanship. That will be important – soon. The Court will likely consider several politically incendiary issues in its 2012-13 term. May universities use race as a consideration in admissions, as Justice Sandra Day O’Connor said they could, in a famous decision from 2003? Does the Voting Rights Act of 1965 discriminate against white voters and legislators in southern states? Does the Defense of Marriage Act discriminate unlawfully against gay people? And – most dramatically of all – does the constitution include a right to same-sex marriage?

Look for Roberts to lead the conservative side on all of these issues. For the next year, and many more, the Chief Justice’s vote in the health-care case will be seen as the great aberration of his judicial career.

About the Author:

JEFFREY TOOBIN is the bestselling author of The Nine, Too Close to Call, A Vast Conspiracy, and The Run of His Life. He is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the senior legal analyst at CNN. He lives with his family in New York.

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House Audio
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0449013677
• ISBN 13: 9780449013670
• Binding: Audio CD
• Number of pages: 12