Roberts’ concurrence in June Medical v. Russo, which quashed conservatives’ best chance at chipping away at Roe v. Wade in a generation, centered on the importance of stare decisis — “the legal term for fidelity to precedent,” which, Roberts writes, “requires [the Court] to treat like cases alike.” Since the Lousiana law in June Medical imposed a similar burden of access to abortion as the Texas law challenged in 2016’s Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, Roberts determined that the Court was bound by precedent to strike it down.

That outcome infuriated conservatives and was celebrated by liberals and pro-choice groups. Yet Roberts’ opinion has also caused some progressive legal commentators to push back against the emerging narrative of the Chief Justice as an ideological moderate. Following the June Medical decision, Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick called Roberts’ concurrence “classic Roberts — cloak[ing] a major blow to the left in what appears to be a small victory for it.” According to Lithwick, Roberts’ opinion appeared to protect the institutional integrity of the Court while simultaneously providing a roadmap for conservatives to undermine abortion rights “so long as they ground the laws in better pretextual arguments.” Or, as Lithwick paraphrased, “Lie better next time.” For Lithwick and others on the left, Roberts is still the same man who authored the opinion in Shelby County v. Holder, the decision which gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and who joined the majority in Citizens United v. FEC, which opened the floodgates to dark money in federal elections.

The question of Justice Roberts’ intentions — and the actual extremity of his conservatism — has been hotly debated since he first burst onto the national scene in 2005.

In July of that year, Roberts was nominated by President George W. Bush to fill the seat vacated by retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. While Roberts’ nomination was still pending before the Senate, Chief Justice William Rehnquist died, prompting Bush to instead submit Roberts’ name for the bench’s top position. At the time, the 50-year-old Roberts had served just over two years as a judge on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Besides a sterling academic resume, a decade in corporate law, and stints as a young lawyer in the Reagan and H.W. Bush administrations, there was little indication of how Roberts might operate on the Court.