Steelman · slot A
The promise-breaker on the bench
A constitutional originalist who took Roberts at his word would argue —I supported John Roberts because he spent the Reagan years arguing, persuasively, that unelected judges were usurping powers the Constitution assigned to Congress and the President. He told the Senate his job was to call balls and strikes. The shadow-docket memos now show him doing the opposite: reaching out to halt the Clean Power Plan with no oral argument, no developed record, prejudging the merits in a private memo, and overriding Justice Kagan's call for ordinary process. Whatever you think of the EPA rule, intervening that way — fast, unsigned, on impulse — is precisely the unaccountable judicial activism the young Roberts said weakened the case for life tenure. He has become his own cautionary tale.