Supreme Court Playing a Long Game

The Supreme Court led by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. showed again this year that it is playing a long game, writing opinions that move the law in small but steady steps in a conservative direction. 

At first glance, many of its decisions appear modest, and the justices themselves downplayed them as narrow and tightly targeted. But they also set the stage for broader rulings, and liberals voiced concern about their long-term impact. 

Many rely on well-established rights, such as freedom of speech and free exercise of religion, but extend those rights for the first time to corporations, wealthy donors and conservatives who bristle at what they view as liberal government mandates, from paying union fees to offering birth control to female workers. 

Four of the most significant rulings — on campaign finance, public prayer, religious freedom and union fees — yielded the same 5-4 split. They pitted the Republican appointees, Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Anthony M. Kennedy and Samuel A. Alito Jr., against the dissenting Democratic appointees, Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. 

Not all of the rulings were conservative. Roberts spoke for a unanimous court in extending the right to personal privacy to smartphones, and he joined the majority in two rulings that upheld the Obama administration’s environmental regulations limiting air pollution and greenhouse gases. 

But on the big issues where justices were divided, Roberts and the conservatives usually held sway. 

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