Legal writing provides clues to the Justices' original positions in the health care case

You may not have realized that legal writing can be a tool for solving mysteries. But sleuth Ross Guberman has demonstrated that it can. In an article in his on-line newsletter, he attempts to solve a lingering question from the Supreme Court’s last term: Did Chief Justice John Roberts switch sides in the health care case at the last minute? Applying forensic linguistics to the opinion’s prose, Guberman concludes that Roberts was probably the original author of the majority opinion and Justice Scalia probably drafted the dissent.

(jdf)