This case was a rude reminder that his careful self-presentation comes with a price. He is no more likely than any other justice to yield on what he regards as a matter of principle. But the raised expectation of consensus magnifies a defeat like this one: his consensus project lost as well....
In the majority opinion, Justice John Paul Stevens found five votes for the conclusion that Massachusetts not only met all three tests but was also entitled to special deference for its claim to standing because of its status as a sovereign state. Invoking no modern precedent — because there was none — to support this new theory of states’ rights, Justice Stevens deftly turned the court’s federalism revolution, which he has long opposed, on its head and provoked an objection from the chief justice. States have “no special rights or status” when it comes to standing, Chief Justice Roberts said.
For the Chief Justice, a Dissent and a Line in the Sand
By LINDA GREENHOUSE
WASHINGTON
WHEN the Supreme Court ordered the Bush administration last week to take global warming seriously, the headlines the decision generated were well deserved. This was a major ruling, likely to help shape an important policy debate.
It may be heresy, then, to suggest that the court’s directive to the Environmental Protection Agency was not necessarily the most important part of the decision.
Well after the debate over climate change moves to other forums — as it promptly did in the days following the decision — the case is likely to be remembered for two other reasons.
One is how the 5-to-4 majority widened access to the federal courts, reinvigorating the doctrine of environmental standing by giving a surprising new twist to the court’s long-running debate over states’ rights. The other is how vigorously Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. expressed his displeasure at that development. His 15-page dissenting opinion, his first of the term, served as a declaration of his deepest jurisprudential beliefs and highest priorities. It thus offered the most revealing portrait in the 18-month history of the Roberts court of the new chief justice at work....
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