Monday round-up

By James Bickford
on Jul 25, 2011 at 9:59 am

On Friday, Justice Ginsburg gave a speech in Cooperstown, New York in which she reviewed the past Term.  (Thanks to How Appealing for the link from Jess Bravin’s Twitter feed.)  The Justice began with a selection of questions from oral argument (which she then cited as illustrating “why the Court does not plan to permit televising oral arguments anytime soon”) and then discussed many cases from the Term, often summarizing both the majority and dissenting opinions.  Among other things, she described Justice Alito’s dissent in Snyder v. Phelps, the funeral protest case, as “heart-felt.”  Discussing Arizona Free Enterprise Club’s Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett, in which a bare majority of the Court declared a public campaign financing scheme unconstitutional, she indicated that “[a]ll the democracy money can buy, I believe, is not what the First Amendment orders.”  Constitutional Law Prof Blog also posts the text of the speech.

Writing at PrawfsBlawg, Roderick Hills also discusses the Court’s opinion in the Arizona campaign-finance case.  He criticizes the Court’s treatment of its precedent, arguing that that “one cannot make any claim to intellectual coherence if one invokes the distinction between ‘subsidies’ and ‘penalties’ in one case (Regan v. Taxation With Representation) to eliminate a First Amendment violation only to ignore the distinction in another case [Arizona Free Enterprise] to create a violation.”