Politics
Out of context: Reply #10224
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- ukit0
And this is how John Roberts chooses to act now that he actually has power:
http://politicsmagazine.com/maga…
There are two things about the Citizens United case that seem to really irk McCain and Feingold. The first is the Supreme Court broadening the scope of the case during the rearguments to consider the constitutionality of the law. The Court could still rule narrowly in the case and avoid that question. It could say that provisions of McCain-Feingold don’t apply to video-on-demand. It could also say that the law doesn’t apply to a group like Citizens United, which only took small contributions from corporate donors. “Until a few months ago,” Feingold said on the Senate floor, “no one had any idea that the Citizens United case would potentially become the vehicle for such a wholesale uprooting of the principles that have governed the financing of our elections for so long.”
It does not look like the Court is going to rule narrowly. There is a theory among observers that the court held the rearguments in September—a month before its fall session was scheduled to begin—so it could rule in time to influence the 2010 elections. (Although, as the Court’s decision didn’t come down in 2009, some are beginning to wonder how broad the delayed ruling will be and if it will affect the midterm elections at all.)
To McCain and Feingold, this is judicial activism at its worst—albeit from conservative justices who routinely condemn judicial activism. “Activist judges—regardless of whether it is liberal or conservative activism—assume the judiciary is a super legislature of moral philosophers, entitled to support Congress’ policy choices whenever they choose,” McCain said. “I believe this judicial activism is wrong and is contrary to the Constitution.” Feingold went so far as to quote Chief Justice Roberts’ testimony during his confirmation hearings in which he enumerated his fealty to precedent.
That ties into the second thing that bothers McCain and Feingold. In the rearguments for Citizens United, the conservative wing of the bench actively questioned whether members of Congress can fairly legislate election law since they have a stake in the game—namely that they want to be reelected. Justice Scalia said, “I doubt that one can expect a body of incumbents to draw election restrictions that do not favor incumbents.”
To McCain, Scalia’s statement questions his integrity. And it really gets to him. He called Scalia’s remark an “affront.” “It exposed his belief that when it comes to issues relating to campaign finance reform, he is somehow a better arbiter of what is needed to reform the electoral process than the Congress or the American people,” McCain said. In some ways, McCain framed his remarks as a showdown between the legislative and judicial branches. Repeatedly, McCain argued, Congress has acted in the best interest of the people to regulate campaign finance.
“Whatever one thinks of a First Amendment right for corporations,” he said, “it is not appropriate for a nondemocratic branch of government to raise a question of the broadest scope at the last minute when such a question was not raised in the trial court.”