Today, we learned that the final day of the Supreme Court’s 2011-2012 session will take place at 10 a.m. on Thursday, June 28, and that Chief Justice John Roberts will most likely issue the majority opinion. (I’ll be running a live blog that day over atNational Review, beginning at 9:30 a.m.) From what Roberts said at oral argument last March, it’s likely that this means that Obamacare’s individual mandate is going down, but that some of the law will remain intact. Here’s why.
We don’t know for sure that Roberts is going to write the majority opinion, but veteran court-watchers say it’s almost certain, because Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the majority opinion in the Arizona immigration case that was read today. The Supremes try to rotate the authorship duties around, so that everyone gets their fair share of opinion-writing. After today, Roberts is on deck.