Justice Stevens: John Roberts Really Wants To Protect Rich

[kpete]

Retired Justice John Paul Stevens is taking aim at the Supreme Court's recent 5-4 decision to eliminate the limit on a person's aggregate expenditures to political candidates and committees in an election cycle.

"The voter is less important than the man who provides money to the candidate," he told the New York Times, criticizing what he views as the premise of Chief Justice John Roberts' controlling opinion. "It's really wrong."

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Stevens tore into Roberts and the Supreme Court's conservative tilt in a separate interview with New Yorker legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin.

"Sam Alito replacing Justice O’Connor was a very significant change," he told the magazine in an article for its forthcoming issue. "He is much more conservative. And, as for John Roberts, he is much more in the direction of protecting the rights of very rich people to donate money to campaigns than former Chief Justice Bill Rehnquist ever was."

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more:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/john-paul-stevens-campaign-finance-mccutcheon-john-roberts

[CTyankee]

1. I can't wait to read his book! I hope he also takes aim at the 2A.

That would be refreshing!

[BeyondGeography]

2. Roberts is thin-skinned and that will leave a mark

Thank you, Justice Stevens.

[G_j]

3. Justice Stevens Suggests Solution for ‘Giant Step in the Wrong Direction’

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/22/us/politics/justice-stevenss-prescription-for-giant-step-in-wrong-direction.html?hp&_r=1

-snip-

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. started his controlling opinion with a characteristically crisp and stirring opening sentence: “There is no right more basic in our democracy than the right to participate in electing our political leaders.”

But that was misleading, Justice Stevens said. “The first sentence here,” he said, “is not really about what the case is about.”

The plaintiff, Shaun McCutcheon, an Alabama businessman, had made contributions to 15 candidates in the 2012 election. He sued so he could give money to 12 more. None of the candidates in the second group was running in Alabama.

Mr. McCutcheon was not trying to participate in electing his own leaders, Justice Stevens said. “The opinion is all about a case where the issue was electing somebody else’s representatives,” he said.

“The opinion has the merit of being faithful to the notion that money is speech and that out-of-district money has the same First Amendment protection as in-district money,” he said. “I think that’s an incorrect view of the law myself, but I do think there’s a consistency between that opinion and what went before.”

He was referring to the court’s earlier campaign finance decisions and, notably, to Citizens United. How that case was transformed from a minor, quirky case about a tendentious documentary into a judicial landmark has long been a source of mystery.

-snip-