"The arrival of a neophyte justice coupled with Chief Justice Roberts’s increasing mastery of the judicial machinery..."

"... foreshadow a widening gap between the Democratic-led political branches and the Supreme Court. Indeed, the court appears poised to move to the right in the Obama era."

Liptak tacks left. Or, uh, the Court tacks right. John Roberts is a big right winger. Just look — look! — at all that incremental minimalism he's insidiously inflicting on us with the assistance of the mushily malleable Anthony Kennedy, that infuriatingly enigmatic Justice whom the smiling villain Roberts controls in ways that neophyte Sonia Sotomayor will never understand.