GW Bush’s third most harmful act, behind the Iraq War and allowing the assault weapons ban to expire, was nominating Roberts and Alito to the Supreme Court.
Roberts’s Rule of Disorder in Voting Rights Law:
[Roberts] made an observation known as dicta—a comment that might not be necessary to resolve a case or even be legally binding in the future, but that can be cited as a “persuasive authority.” This is where Roberts gave birth to the fiction of a “fundamental principle of equal sovereignty” among states. The trouble with the principle is that it does not exist. Roberts created it with an ellipsis and what can only be understood as deliberate misapplication of the law.
Litman is the national authority on equal sovereignty. In 2016, she wrote a complete 67-page history of what Roberts called a “fundamental principle” and “historic tradition.” Her conclusion? Roberts manufactured it for his own purposes. It is, she writes, an “invented tradition”—invented by John Roberts, and then cited by John Roberts.