Wait, John Roberts Wrote the Dissent, Too?

Give this man a raise: John Roberts not only wrote the majority opinion that upheld ObamaCare, but most of the dissent as well, according to Paul Campos at Salon. His report, based on an unnamed "source within the court," says that Roberts drafted the first three-quarters of the dissent eventually offered by the court's conservative wing. At some point, he switched sides and wrote the decision to save the individual mandate. The four conservatives left behind then tacked on their own joint ending to Roberts' "dissent," which at the time of its writing was going to be the majority opinion.

The report goes further than the previous scuttlebutt, which held that Roberts did indeed change his mind late in the process, but it did not go so far as to say he actually wrote the dissent. "In short, it appears Chief Justice Roberts ended up in large part authoring both the majority opinion and the dissent in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius," writes Campos. "This would seem to give a whole new meaning to the term 'swing justice.'" Click for his full story. (More John Roberts stories.)