This post is predicated on a text message I just received from my friend, to quote: “Roberts is a genius. He punted it to Congress to deal with as a tax issue and curbed further creep of the Commerce Clause.”

Let’s look at what John Roberts did today. Stepping back from whether or not ObamaCare is good policy–and he’s right, that’s not for the court to decide–let’s look at the mechanics in place here.

• Roberts joined with the liberals on the court (Ginsberg, Breyer, Sotomayor, Kagan) to constitutionally validate the American Care Act (ACA) without some provisions of the Medicaid expansion
• Roberts defined the “individual mandate” as a tax with the liberal side
• Roberts and the conservative side held that the Commerce Clause does not Congress the power to compel commerce
• The court held 7-2 that the government could not coerce the states into accepting the Medicaid expansion by withholding all Medicaid funding

Some excellent analyses I have read (here and here) have confirmed the notion that Roberts’ decision might have “lost the battle but won the war.” In siding with the liberals, Roberts took away the potency of arguments against the partisanship of the court. In upholding the mandate, Roberts recognized the power of Congress to enact policy. In ruling the exercise of the mandate under the Commerce Clause unconstitutional, Roberts provided a key precedent for future decisions limiting the power of the government to compel commerce. In ruling the mandate a tax, Roberts made it very clear that Congress was only exercising its existing authority and has no additional authority. Finally, in rejecting the coercion of states into joining the Medicaid expansion, Roberts upheld what remains of Federalism.

The politics at play behind the scenes must have been bewildering. A lot of moving parts had to come together here, and Roberts played his role expertly. He got the liberals (with the exception of Ginsburg) to join his interpretation of the Commerce Clause and Necessary and Proper Clause as such, presumably in exchange for his endorsement of the ACA. And this interpretation of the clause will survive long after the ACA is repealed in Congress.

People, for reasons of their own, often fail to do things that would be good for them or good for society. Those failures—joined with the similar failures of others—can readily have a substantial effect on interstate commerce. Under the Government’s logic, that authorizes Congress to use its commerce power to compel citizens to act as the Government would have them act…Congress already enjoys vast power to regulate much of what we do. Accepting the Government’s theory would give Congress the same license to regulate what we do not do, fundamentally changing the relation between the citizen and the Federal Government.

This was the most important part of the ruling.  The biggest fear of the ACA was not the socialization of medicine–although that’s a legitimate fear–but the creeping expanse of federal power.  All lovers of freedom should cheer the now-grounded notion that the government at least does not have the power to compel the purchase of a product by a citizen–a truly frightening idea.

Now, this notion could have come across in a majority decision if Roberts had joined the court’s other conservatives in striking down the law.  But here Roberts played his hand very well.  It’s not just about legacy, although he was able to secure trust in the Supreme Court that will be invaluable when, for instance, the Court strikes down the next congressional Obamination.  It’s not a perfect result for conservatives, of course–we would have preferred the entire law struck down because it’s just bad policy–but it speaks to Roberts’ integrity that he is able to ground his opinion in conservative notions of Federalism and judicial restraint (a point made in the dissent as well: “For all these reasons, to say that the Individual Mandate merely imposes a tax is not to interpret the statute but to rewrite it”).  Most importantly, it allows Roberts to continue to guide the Roberts Court for the next couple years–and Roberts himself, whose tenure as Chief Justice will probably last for 30 more years, will certainly reap personal and judicial dividends from his leadership on this issue.

Remember:  Roberts did not endorse Obamacare today.  In fact, he all but calls it bad policy.  Quoth my friend in an email to me this morning:

By sustaining individual the mandate on the basis of Congress’s power to raise taxes, he punted Obamacare back to Congress and gave his permission for the GOP to call it a tax. This should be enough to make every Democratic incumbent cringe. Since inception, the President and the Democratic House leadership have been desperate to avoid calling a spade a spade: that the mandate was a new tax. Roberts prevented them from having their way and ultimately will let Congress decide whether to stay or repeal this new tax.

I am not nearly as upset now as I was when I first heard the decision.  This is not an ideal result for conservatives, but this is not a victory for liberals either.  For most liberals, that there are actual limits on what the Government has the power to do will be a tough pill to swallow.  As George Will writes, “People steeped in Congress’s culture of unbridled power find it incomprehensible that the Framers fashioned the Constitution as a bridle.”  Now that has changed.  And that is good news for lovers of freedom.