Victor Davis Hanson: Supreme Court hypocrisies

Among our elites — journalists, pundits and academics — liberal Supreme Court justices are always deemed “open-minded,” even as they are expected to vote in absolute lockstep liberal fashion. In contrast, a conservative justice is written off as reactionary or blatantly partisan when he likewise predictably follows his own orthodoxy — pressures that may well have affected Roberts if reports of an 11th-hour switch in his vote are true.

No surprise, then, that a surreal discussion followed the recent ruling of the high court. Our legal establishment expected that the four liberal judges would not deviate one iota in their affirmation of the health care law, even as it hoped that a conservative or two would show judicial character by joining the liberals.

Democrats like activist federal courts to overturn ballot propositions and majority votes of legislatures fostered by supposedly illiberal and unsophisticated voters. But on health care, liberals — led by the president — made the argument that a wrongly activist Supreme Court should not dare to tamper with what an elected Congress had wrought.

President Obama was incoherent in his commentary on the Supreme Court. Before the Roberts ruling, when most were betting that the president's health care plan would be overturned, Obama was angry at the thought of such judicial activism. In a manner that did not reflect much knowledge of either the Constitution or the history of the republic, he thundered, “Ultimately, I'm confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.”

Of course, the Supreme Court's overturning of a law is not extraordinary or unprecedented. And the president's bill did not pass by a “strong majority,” but barely squeaked through the House by seven votes.