Noah Feldman, Columnist

Chief Justice Roberts Is Holding the Line on Elections

The court made the right call on Pennsylvania voting. But the alternative argument isn’t crazy.

October 20, 2020 at 2:40 PM UTC

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People."

The Supreme Court looms especially large in this election — which is not how John Roberts wants it.
Photographer: Stefani Reynolds/Getty Images

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Chief Justice John Roberts is bending over backwards to try and show that the Supreme Court is nonpartisan when it comes to the 2020 election. The latest evidence is his vote in a 4-4 decision that, because it was a tie, upheld a decision by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court extending the deadline for counting mail-in ballots for three days after Election Day.

In my view, Roberts got the law right. And it is certainly true that the 4-4 tie shows how the court’s election decisions could potentially be affected by the confirmation of Judge Amy Coney Barrett.