Linda Greenhouse writes about "A Chief Justice Without a Friend."

That headline — in the NYT — reminds me of the junior high school taunt: Nobody likes you.

... I can’t think of a chief justice who has been so uniformly vilified by both left and right. The attacks from the left are logical enough. It’s the fire from the right that merits closer observation...

Think about the Affordable Care Act cases, really the only two important decisions by which Chief Justice Roberts has left his erstwhile friends empty-handed. What explains the obsession with these two decisions that would lead people who should be thrilled with his overall performance to want instead to throw him under the bus?...

Greenhouse says Roberts "didn’t get the memo" that judicial conservatism has changed and is no longer grounded in judicial restraint. (This is, by the way, an observation that liberals have been making since at least 1981, when it was the theme of the dean's speech at my law school graduation.)

Remember when “judicial activism” was a nasty label that conservatives hurled at liberals and when “legislating from the bench” was the worst thing a judge could do? Not, it seems, any more. Josh Blackman and Randy Barnett, two law professors who are advising Senator Rand Paul’s presidential campaign (Professor Barnett was an architect of the first Affordable Care Act case), wrote in the conservative Weekly Standard last month that “presidential candidates should reject the vapid labels of ‘restraint’ and ‘legislating from the bench.’ ” Rather, they argued, “The heart of the inquiry should be whether the nominee is willing to engage and enforce the Constitution against the other branches, not whether they can parrot clichés about ‘strict constructionism’ or ‘calling balls and strikes’ during a confirmation hearing.” In other words, judicial “engagement” is good. Judicial restraint is a dereliction of duty.