“Constitutional Protections Cannot Be Undone By Popular Vote”: Why The Constitution Trumps Any State’s Ban On Same-Sex Marriage
With the Supreme Court scheduled to hear oral argument next week in marriage equality cases, everyone is looking to the marriage cases the Court decided in 2013 in an attempt to predict what it’s likely to do this time around. But another recent case on a very different topic may actually have much more to say about marriage equality than one would think: last year’s case about warrantless searches of an arrestee’s cell phone. In that case, the Court held such searches unconstitutional and underscored a principle that bears on the marriage discussion—namely, that constitutional protections cannot be undone by popular vote.
The basic question in the marriage equality cases is simple. Does the Fourteenth Amendment—which prohibits states from denying any person “liberty… without due process of law” and “the equal protection of the laws”—bar state bans on same-sex marriage? The text and history of the U.S. Constitution, not to mention the Court’s own precedents, make clear that it does. Opponents of marriage equality thus are resorting to what is becoming a familiar argument, saying marriage equality should be decided not by the courts, but by the people. By that logic, citizens of individual states can trump the Constitution’s broad equality guarantee if they vote to do so.
One of the most significant statements of this view can be found in the lower court opinion the Court is reviewing. Last year, federal appeals court judge Jeffrey Sutton described the question in the marriage equality cases as a “debate about whether to allow the democratic processes begun in the States to continue… or to end them now by requiring all states in the Circuit to extend the definition of marriage to encompass gay couples.” He noted that “[i]n just eleven years, 19 states and a conspicuous District, accounting for nearly 45 percent of the population, have exercised their sovereign powers to expand [the] definition of marriage.” He described that “timeline” as “difficult… to criticize as unworthy of further debate and voting.” Unsurprisingly, defenders of that opinion have continued this line of argument in the Supreme Court. One of the parties’ briefs argues that the Court should adopt a deferential standard in reviewing state marriage bans because that standard “defers to voters in order to protect the democratic process.” Another asserts that “[t]he Constitution delegates most sensitive policy choices to democratic debates, not judicial mandates.”
These arguments about “democratic process” may seem more attractive than some of the other arguments made by opponents of marriage equality. For instance, leaders of the 2012 Republican National Convention Committee on the Platform filed a brief arguing that marriage bans are constitutional because, in part, men need “traditional marriage” so women can “‘transform [their] male lust into love.’”
But there’s a basic flaw in the “democratic process” arguments, as last year’s cell phone search decision confirms. They get the Constitution exactly backwards.
In Riley v. California, the Court considered whether the police may without a warrant search someone’s cell phone following an arrest. The Court held, in a unanimous opinion, that the answer is no; such searches are generally prohibited by the Fourth Amendment’s requirement that “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures… not be violated.” Recognizing that “unrestrained search[es] for evidence of criminal activity” was “one of the driving forces behind the [American] Revolution,” the Court concluded that warrantless cell phone searches permitted too great an intrusion on privacy and thus should not be allowed, absent exigent circumstances preventing the police from obtaining a warrant. As Chief Justice Roberts explained in the Court’s opinion, modern cell phones are “now such a pervasive and insistent part of daily life that the proverbial visitor from Mars might conclude they were an important feature of human anatomy,” and they can contain a vast amount of “sensitive personal information.”
Justice Alito agreed with the rest of the Court that such searches were unconstitutional, but he wrote separately to make two points, one of which has bearing on the marriage equality cases. Alito wrote that he “would reconsider the question presented here if either Congress or state legislatures, after assessing the legitimate needs of law enforcement and the privacy interests of cell phone owners, enact legislation that draws reasonable distinctions based on categories of information or perhaps other variables.” Put differently, Alito would allow Congress and state legislatures to change the Court’s answer in Riley. Even though the Court had concluded that the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on “unreasonable searches and seizures” generally prevents the police from engaging in such searches, Alito would allow Congress and state legislatures to decide that “the legitimate needs of law enforcement” outweigh the “privacy interests of cell phone owners.”
Tellingly, no other Justice joined Alito’s opinion. Not one. And that tells us a great deal about the “democratic processes” position adopted by Judge Sutton and advanced by opponents of marriage equality. What the rest of the Court implicitly recognized in Riley was that Alito’s approach is fundamentally wrong. Congress and state legislatures may be able to supplement the Constitution’s protections—indeed, they may sometimes be well-suited to doing so, as Alito noted in a different Fourth Amendment case about GPS monitoring—but they cannot scrap them.
Indeed, that is a point so fundamental to our constitutional order that the Supreme Court has made it repeatedly in various contexts, noting that fundamental constitutional protections “depend on the outcome of no elections,” and “[a] citizen’s constitutional rights can hardly be infringed simply because a majority of the people choose that it be.” As recently as 2011, in a campaign finance case, Roberts explained that “the whole point of the First Amendment is to protect speakers against unjustified government restrictions on speech, even when those restrictions reflect the will of the majority.” The Constitution, not voters, has the ultimate legal authority. In the past, the Court hasn’t treated the Fourteenth Amendment any differently than the First and the Fourth. In 1996, for example, it struck down a state constitutional amendment adopted by state voters because it violated the Fourteenth Amendment.
When the Court considered the scope of the Fourth Amendment’s protections in Riley, it didn’t say it was up to Congress or state legislatures to decide how much privacy Americans enjoy when it comes to their cell phones. Instead, the Court considered the text and history of the Fourth Amendment, as well as the Court’s precedents. The Court should do the same thing this year when it considers the scope of the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections in the marriage equality cases. If it does, there’s no question what the result should be: a resounding victory for marriage equality.
By: Brianne J. Gorod, Appellate Counsel at The Constitutional Accountability Center; The New Republic, April 23, 2015
“Liberals Discomfort With Power”: No Good Argument For Clinton Needing A Challenger
Even before Hillary Clinton formally announced her intention to seek the office of the presidency, left-of-center pundits had been worried about the appearance of primogenitor. While the Republicans are generally comfortable with the coronation of heirs to the party’s nomination, the Democrats are not. There’s something monarchical about political ascension, the pundits say, something authoritarian and dynastic: it’s anathema to the principles of egalitarianism and meritocracy.
After Jeb Bush announced the launch of his exploratory committee, Glenn Greenwald, the civil-libertarian journalist, said a matchup between the wife and son/brother of former presidents would “vividly underscore how the American political class functions: by dynasty, plutocracy, fundamental alignment of interests masquerading as deep ideological divisions, and political power translating into vast private wealth and back again. The educative value would be undeniable.”
David Corn didn’t go as far as Greenwald. But he found Clinton’s apparent inevitability equally distasteful. Corn advanced the name of former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley as a foil. O’Malley, he said, “would make a good sparring partner. He’s a smart guy with sass, but he’s not a slasher, who could inflict long-lasting political damage.” Critically important, he said, is that Clinton shouldn’t assume victory. Only with a primary fight, Clinton would “earn—not inherit—the nomination,” Corn wrote. “She’d be a fighter, not a dynastic queen. The press and the public would have something to ponder beyond just Clinton herself.”
I admire Corn and Greenwald immensely, and agree with them mostly. But I’d argue their assessments, as well as those of others in the left-liberal commentariat, are not arguments. Instead, they are statements reflecting a discomfort with power, a discomfort widely shared among Democrats. Meanwhile, Republicans have no such qualms whatsoever.
Despite her flaws, Clinton and her campaign represent a singular moment in the history of the Democratic Party. Namely, there probably has not been this much party unity since 1964 when President Lyndon Baines Johnson, campaigning in the memory of an assassinated president, beat conservative Barry Goldwater in a landslide. But that unity failed to last. Four years later, in the shadow of Vietnam and in the backlash against the Civil Rights Act, LBJ’s Democratic Party would crack up forever.
In the wake of that crack-up, the Republicans routinely won by deploying an array of wedge issues to divide and conquer—from Richard Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” in 1968, to George H.W. Bush’s “Willie Horton” attack in 1988, to his son’s “gays, guns, and God” in 2004. But by 2008, something essential had shifted. Barack Obama forged a coalition among minorities, young voters, and white liberals and John McCain refused to go negative on his opponent’s race, fearing backlash. In 2012, the Obama coalition held despite Mitt Romney’s clumsy attempts at race baiting.
Holding that coalition together is vital to maintaining the gains, large and small, made in eight years of unprecedented, massive, and total resistance on the part of the Republicans. And I’m not only talking about the Affordable Care Act, which is transforming life for millions, nor the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, which is finally taking effect.
Since 2013, when Obama realized he’d get nothing in terms of legislation from the Republicans, the president used his executive authority to make several small-bore advances in climate change, immigration, foreign policy, gay rights, and the minimum wage (among federal contractors). All it takes to turn that around is the next Republican president.
In 2000, Ralph Nader won a few million votes by claiming there was no difference between the major parties. While his message was undeniable, his campaign was indisputably destructive. Nader’s take of the popular vote was enough for George W. Bush to beat Al Gore by a hair. In addition to a disastrous war, giveaways to the wealthy, and incompetent governance, we have Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito, who, along with the high Court’s Republican majority, believe money has no corrupting effect on politics and that closely held businesses may discriminate on the basis of religious liberty.
Nader isn’t responsible for the Bush era. My point is that the stakes are high—too high to worry about a candidate’s foibles and fret over a “dynastic queen.” That matters less than Clinton’s being a Democrat who will, at the very least, hold the line against attempts to redistribute more wealth upward, to dismantle the welfare state, to privatized the public sphere, and wage more war abroad. Hopefully, if Clinton wins in 2016, she will build on the progressive record started by her predecessor.
Left-liberals are right in saying Clinton must clarify her positions on immigration, Wall Street, unemployment, foreign policy, and a host of other issues. She has been and will continue to be like her husband: maddeningly circumspect and hard to pin down. But that, in addition to all the other complaints thus far, doesn’t amount to an argument against her winning the nomination. Those complaints reflect liberals’ unease with power and the use of that power to protect hard-won progressive gains.
It’s time to get over that.
After all, voting is a political strategy that hopes to achieve political ends, not a quadrennial occasion to assess a candidate’s ideological worth.
By: John Stoehr, Managing Editor of The Washington Spectator; Featured Post, The National Memo, April 21, 2015
“A Cop’s ‘Large Hunch’ About Criminal Wrongdoing Won’t Do”: The Supreme Court Just Checked Cops’ Power To Extend Traffic Stops
Cases involving the Fourth Amendment’s proscription on unreasonable searches and seizures are the sleepers of every Supreme Court term. Unless the justices are confronted with new technologies or particularly invasive government practices—like body-cavity or thermal-imaging searches—these decisions rarely grab headlines, leaving only prosecutors, defense attorneys, and law professors to ponder their significance.
But this can’t be the norm—not in the wake of Ferguson, with heightened awareness of abusive policing. Today more than ever, an understanding of what limits the Constitution places on police and the Supreme Court’s interpretation of those limits should be essential knowledge. Anything less, to borrow the words of Justice Sonia Sotomayor, would simply reduce the Fourth Amendment “to a useless piece of paper.”
Because at the root of Rodriguez v. United States, decided Tuesday by the Supreme Court, lies one of the most common, and perhaps the only, interaction law-abiding citizens will ever have with law enforcement: traffic stops. Being pulled over is so mundane, I wondered in February whether Chief Justice John Roberts had ever been inconvenienced by the practice, perhaps as a result of driving with a broken taillight—the kind of infraction that triggered the killing of Walter Scott in South Carolina earlier this month.
When Rodriguez was argued in January, Roberts asked how exactly traffic stops go down in real life, saying lightheartedly, “Usually, people have told me, when you’re stopped, the officer says, ‘License and registration.’” That drew laughs from the courtroom—the implication being that Roberts wouldn’t admit to ever having broken the law—but it also suggested that perhaps he doesn’t quite grasp how humiliating these encounters can be. This prompted a rebuttal in open court from Sotomayor, who told the chief that she’d been stopped and that the experience of being kept longer than the time required to give her a ticket was “annoying as heck.”
Whether Roberts eventually grasped as much is unclear, but he did join the six-justice majority that agreed that police can’t extend the length of a traffic stop beyond the time necessary to inquire into the alleged traffic violation. In a triumph for citizens’ rights, the Supreme Court ruled that “a police stop exceeding the time needed to handle the matter for which the stop was made violates the Constitution’s shield against unreasonable seizures.”
That’s a big deal, if only because a lot can happen whenever police extend a traffic stop, even for a few minutes longer than necessary. To be sure, police already have wide latitude to stop anyone who is observed violating traffic laws; if probable cause exists that you’re not obeying the rules of the road, police are justified in stopping you. But what if, during the course of the stop, police also suspect you’re up to no good? Can they just hold you while they call in the dogs, as happened in Rodriguez, or for backup to conduct a wider criminal investigation? The lower courts that originally considered Rodriguez thought so, reasoning that a stop lasting, say, seven to ten minutes longer than necessary “was not of constitutional significance”—that the annoyance merely amounted to a “de minimis intrusion” on a motorist’s freedom of movement.
The Supreme Court didn’t buy that argument. “Authority for the seizure… ends when tasks tied to the traffic infraction are—or reasonably should have been—completed,” wrote Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg for the majority. The court focused exclusively on the true “mission” of traffic stops—incidentals such as “checking the driver’s license, determining whether there are outstanding warrants against the driver, and inspecting the automobile’s registration and proof of insurance.” All of these things are well and good when the initial stop is valid.
The problem arises when a well-meaning officer turns the traffic inquiry into a prolonged, crime-fighting one. Such unrelated “detours” away from the original traffic mission, the court observed, are unconstitutional without independent, reasonable suspicion that an actual crime has taken place. A cop’s “large hunch” about criminal wrongdoing won’t do.
That’s a commonsense approach—no one should be stopped for even a moment longer than absolutely necessary. But will the ruling deter police from trying other dilatory tactics? Rodriguez, for one, doesn’t explicitly forbid officers from, say, taking their sweet time while running your license plate or from engaging in “friendly” small talk aimed at eliciting consent. These end-runs are still largely acceptable, and only time will tell what other methods cops will employ to bide their time and divine suspicion where initially there was none.
Until then, the Supreme Court should be commended for making the right call and delivering a ruling that, though far from a blockbuster, should encourage anyone who cares about the continued vitality of the Fourth Amendment. In post-Ferguson America, there’s just no other section of the Constitution that matters more—the power of policing rises and falls with every pronouncement on it.
By: Cristian Farias, The New Republic, April 22, 2015
“The Framers Distrusted The Corporate Form”: Toxic Law; How Corporate Power And ‘Religious Freedom’ Threaten Democracy
Corporations from Apple and Angie’s List to Walmart and Wells Fargo exercised their power last week against laws that give aid and comfort to bigots. But don’t be too quick to praise their actions.
Commendable as these corporate gestures were, they also illustrate how America is morphing from a democratic republic into a state where corporations set the political agenda, thanks to a major mistake by Democrats in Congress. What they did has resulted in Supreme Court decisions that would infuriate the framers of our Constitution.
The framers distrusted the corporate form. And they made plain their concerns about concentrations of economic power and resulting inequality, worrying that this would doom our experiment with self-governance. Surely they would be appalled at the exercise of corporate influence last week. For the companies opposing “religious freedom” laws in Arkansas and Indiana were concerned with human rights only in the context of profit maximization, which is what economic theory says corporations are about.
Where are the corporate actions against police violence? Or unequal enforcement of the tax laws, under which workers get fully taxed and corporations literally profit off the tax laws? Or gender pay discrimination? And when have you heard of corporations objecting to secret settlements in cases adjudicated in the taxpayer-financed courts, especially when those settlements unknowingly put others at risk?
The so-called religious freedom restoration statutes in Arkansas, Indiana and 18 other states reflect a growing misunderstanding of the reasons that American law allows corporations to exist, a misunderstanding that infects a majority on our Supreme Court.
Corporations, which have ancient roots, serve valuable purposes that tend to make all of us better off. We benefit from corporations, but they must be servants, not masters.
Confining corporations to the purposes of limiting liability and creating wealth is central to protecting our liberties, as none other than Adam Smith warned 239 years ago in The Wealth of Nations, the first book to explain market economics and capitalism.
There is no fundamental right to create, own or operate any business entity that is a separate person from its owners and managers. Corporations exist only at the grace of legislators.
But in 21st-century America, corporations are increasingly acquiring the rights of people, which is the product of an unfortunate 1993 law championed by Democrats that now helps bigots assert a Constitutional right to discriminate in the public square.
Concern about corporations and concentrated power that diminishes individual liberties has become increasingly relevant since 2005, when John Glover Roberts Jr. was sworn in as chief justice of the United States.
Roberts and other justices who assert a strong philosophical allegiance to the framers’ views have been expanding corporate power in ways that would shock the consciences of the founders — especially James Madison, the primary author of our Constitution, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams.
In 2010, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations could spend unlimited sums influencing elections in the Citizens United decision. Now, as a practical matter, no one can become a Democratic or Republican nominee for president without the support of corporate America.
And, central to the Arkansas and Indiana legislation, the Supreme Court last year imbued privately held corporations with religious rights in the Hobby Lobby case.
The Roberts court invented all of these rights. Principled conservatives should denounce such decisions as “judicial activism,” yet nary a word of such criticism appears in right-wing columns and opinion magazines.
Today’s corporations have their roots in ancient trusts created to protect widows and orphans who inherited property. Hammurabi’s Code provided for an early version of trusts. Later the Romans created proto-corporations to manage public property and the assets of those appointed to oversee the far realms of the empire.
Managers of these early corporations had very limited authority, what the law calls agency, over the assets entrusted to them. Today, corporate managers have vast powers to buy, sell and deploy the assets they manage. They can do anything that is legal and demonstrates reasonable judgment.
Spending money to elect politicians (or pass anti-consumer laws) is perfectly fine under current law if it advances the profit-making interests of the company. Last week, we saw companies denounce bigotry against LGBTQ people, but of course they did so in terms of protecting their profits.
Walmart, the nation’s largest employer, opposed signing the Arkansas bill into law: “Every day in our stores, we see firsthand the benefits diversity and inclusion have on our associates, customers and communities we serve.” Apple CEO Tim Cook said, “America’s business community recognized a long time ago that discrimination, in all its forms, is bad for business.”
But creating efficient vehicles to create wealth by engaging in business does not require political powers, as none other than Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist noted in a dissent.
Where we have gone furthest astray under the Roberts court is in last year’s Hobby Lobby decision. It imbued privately held corporations with rights under the First Amendment, which says, in part, “Congress shall create no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Based on Hobby Lobby, both the Arkansas and Indiana laws were crafted to provide a defense for bigoted actions by businesses.
Yet laws requiring businesses to serve everyone, without regard to their identity, do not inhibit the free exercise of religion. A law that requires a florist or bakery to serve people in same-sex weddings as well as different-sex weddings may trouble the merchant, but it does not inhibit religious activity.
The corporate power on display in the so-called religious freedom restoration cases stems from a Supreme Court case that upheld the doctrine of laws of general applicability.
In 1990, the Supreme Court held that Oregon jobless benefits were properly denied to two Native Americans who worked at a drug rehab facility and who also, as part of their well-established religious practice, ingested peyote, a controlled substance.
Justice Antonin Scalia, who claims to follow the original intent of the Constitution’s drafters, wrote the opinion. He held that “the right of free exercise does not relieve an individual of the obligation to comply with a ‘valid and neutral law of general applicability’” such as denying jobless benefits to drug users.
Scalia cited an 1879 Supreme Court ruling in a test case known as Reynolds in which a Brigham Young associate asserted that federal laws against polygamy interfered with the “free exercise” of the Mormon brand of Christianity.
In that case, as Scalia noted, the high court had rejected the claim that criminal laws against polygamy could not be constitutionally applied to those whose religion commanded the practice. “To permit this would be to make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and in effect to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself,” the conservative justice wrote.
Two years later, Congress undid that sound decision with passage of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a sloppily crafted bill introduced by then-Rep. Chuck Schumer (D- NY), and championed in the Senate by another Democrat, the late Ted Kennedy (D-MA).
It was this law, undoing Scalia’s sound Supreme Court decision, which enabled corporations to exercise their power for a particular cause that is in their interest, namely ending bigotry. Such actions may be laudable, yet still dangerous.
Corporations are valuable and useful vehicles for creating wealth. But they are not and never should be political and religious actors. As artificial “persons,” they should not be imbued with political or religious rights.
We need to keep corporations in their place. Otherwise, next time, their profit maximization may work against your liberties.
By: David Cay Johnston, The National Memo, April 4, 2015
“The Supreme Court’s Extreme Faith”: The Menendez Case Proves The Supreme Court Was Naive About Campaign Finance Laws
No cameras are allowed inside the main Supreme Court chamber, but on Wednesday, a group of activists—for the second time this year—evaded tight security controls and snuck one in to record themselves causing disorder in the court. Their goal: Decry two of the court’s most controversial rulings on campaign finance, Citizens United v. FEC and McCutcheon v. FEC, which have paved the way for powerful donors and corporations to influence elections.
“Justices, is it not your duty to protect our right to self-government?” a protester is heard yelling in a video posted on YouTube. “Reverse McCutcheon. Overturn Citizens United. One person, one vote.” Court police escorted her out, followed by other protesters, including a man chanting, “We who believe in freedom shall not rest.”
Chief Justice John Roberts was not impressed. SCOTUSblog’s Lyle Denniston, one of the few reporters at the scene, noted he grew impatient and later said, “Oh please,” on top of threatening contempt sanctions against the protesters.
Say what you will of the activists’ stunt or the chief’s reaction—because really, no protest in the world will ever overturn a Supreme Court precedent. But consider what Roberts himself proclaimed in McCutcheon, which turned one year old today: “Spending large sums of money in connection with elections, but not in connection with an effort to control the exercise of an officeholder’s duties, does not give rise to quid pro quo corruption. Nor does the possibility that an individual who spends large sums may garner influence over or access to elected officials.”
McCutcheon invalidated something very specific—the limit on the total amount a person can give to all federal candidates during a two-year election cycle—but Roberts didn’t stop there. Time and again he kept singling out blatant quid pro quo arrangements as the only thing Congress could regulate. Not so with meager attempts to “prevent corruption” or curbing “the appearance of mere influence and access.” Those things aren’t as big a deal under the Constitution. Only tit-for-tat corruption is.
Compare that to the other case the protesters targeted, 2010’s Citizens United, a ruling as grand as it was shocking for the dearth of evidence on which it rested: “We now conclude that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.” The court went on: “The appearance of influence or access … will not cause the electorate to lose faith in our democratic order.”
But it turns out corruption, appearances, and influence-peddling are all at the crux of federal charges against New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez. He was indicted Wednesday on several counts of bribery and other offenses, stemming from an allegedly cozy relationship with Salomon Melgen, a Florida ophthalmologist and longtime friend who is accused of giving lavish gifts to the senator. These included a trip to a luxury hotel in Paris, a stay at an upscale villa in the Dominican Republic, contributions to a legal-defense fund, and more than $1 million in donations to various political action groups supporting Democratic candidates—all in exchange for political favors for Melgen, his business interests, and his numerous girlfriends.
Whether these salacious allegations stick or lead to some kind of plea deal will soon be decided; Menendez pled “not guilty” on all charges Thursday. But a sizeable contribution listed in the indictment calls into question the Supreme Court’s extreme faith that large sums of money not directly given to a candidate fail to amount to corruption.
According to prosecutors, Melgen, through his own company, contributed $600,000 to a political action committee aimed at helping Democrats retain control of the Senate. That’s all well and good under Citizens United,except Melgen allegedly earmarked the money so it went directly to the Menendez re-election campaign. That’s also kosher under campaign regulations, except the indictment alleges Menendez “sought and received” the donation—comprised of two checks for $300,000 each, sent to the super PAC in exchange for Menendez’s assistance in resolving a Medicare-related dispute. Interestingly, the indictment notes that Melgen cut one of the checks on the same day he attended an annual fundraiser Menendez hosted.
The legal process will determine the extent to which the alleged favors and contributions are related. But even if they weren’t and the case went away, the Menendez indictment undermines the Supreme Court’s facile conclusion that merely spending large sums of money—absent a clear showing of quid pro quo—isn’t enough to prove that corruption has taken hold. Or the notion that the mere appearance of influence and access to elected leaders fails to be an interest compelling enough to require strong campaign-finance laws—the kind that governs how big donors and big money behave each election cycle.
Chief Justice Roberts may not be too pleased with the recent protests and security breaches at the Supreme Court, but the Menendez case opens the door for some introspection on how recent campaign-finance rulings are reshaping who calls the shots in our democratic order.
By: Cristian Farias, The New Republic, April 2, 2015
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