The marriage equality ruling stitched together the fabric of all the other marriage rulings in the past and stated as purely and simply why it is protected in two ways under the 14th amendment after having risen up from state action and how we as a nation had chosen to relate to marriage as an institution. Summing up the respondent's arguments as counterintuitive, they briefly address the 1st amendment concern in showing that state action is what is addressed, not individual responses.

The affordable care act decision (6-3) ends up looking fairly brave, but sensible. I think it boils down to 'when encountering an argument regarding a small subsection of a law where a reasonable reading of it counters the basic premise and intent of the whole law, it's reasonable to allow for other readings that preserve the intent of the law'. If that sets a 'dangerous' precedent, it's that as legislators, you shouldn't expect that introduction of a subtle poison pill into a law will hold, and that makes sense anyway - follow-up legislation could have done the same thing as the court here by tweaking or wordsmithing a few words used as the attack.

Anyway, it's nice to see that there hasn't been the total stratification of the court that I feared after a few of the earlier rather nasty spats circa 2000. New justices might have helped that, but I think a lot of it comes from time's intercession.