The Court, a legal blog affiliated with York University's Osgoode Hall Law School in Canada, has one of the most clear-eyed analyses I've seen of last week's terrible Supreme Court ruling that threw out decades of precedent to give corporations unlimited power to sway elections.
An excerpt:
"Today...it is difficult to square the image of Roberts as a humble moderate, a fervent advocate of judicial restraint, or, as he then described himself, an 'umpire' calling 'balls and strikes,' with the reality of the Roberts Court's actual decisions. In case after case, the chief justice, together with Justices Kennedy, Scalia, Thomas and Alito, has diminished, dismantled or disavowed precedent after precedent, leaving what was once well-settled law barely recognizable. Last week's 5-4 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which overturns precedent in order to remove all restraints on what corporations may spend on election advertising, appears to be only the latest salvo in a long-planned and increasingly politicized struggle by conservatives to reimagine American law.
"It is no surprise, then, that while The Wall Street Journal's editorial board hailed the Court's ruling, declaring that '[f]reedom has had its best week in many years,' The New York Times decried it as a 'disastrous' decision that has 'thrust politics back to the robber-baron era of the 19th century.' The case is notable not only for its breathtaking substantive outcome, but for the process by which both the majority and minority reasoned their opinions. The judgement, at 183 pages, is a mammoth one. Though the now-familiar conservative majority spoke in four separate opinions, the minority was represented solely by Justice Stevens, the court's longest-serving member and leader of its liberal wing. He penned a 90-page dissent, described by one seasoned observer as 'shot through with disappointment, frustration and uncharacteristic sarcasm.'"
Read the whole piece here.
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