Wow. Jeffrey Toobin: How Chief Justice John Roberts orchestrated the Citizens United decision.

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77. As an attorney I don't find this at all surprising

Maybe I'm just cynical. Or maybe its just experience. Justices push arguments that narrow or broaden the scope of a case all the time. Indeed, the eye-opening lesson for me in the first Supreme Court case I worked on (I've worked on three) was learning from experienced Supreme Court attorneys that I needed to throw out my experience and expectations of how a court will approach an issue. The SCOTUS often decides not to decide issues that were argued to it and, while not as common, its not unheard of for a Justice to argue that the court should address issues not viewed as essential to the decision by the attorneys.

The case was reargued, which would seem to undermine any claim of misconduct. Rearguments -- often expressly sought to buy time to get a different result in the case -- have a long history. Indeed, two of the most famous cases of my lifetime -- Brown v. Board of Education and Roe v. Wade were both reargued before they were decided.

The result in Citizens was wrong, imo, and contrary to established precedent. But the way the court got to that result is actually not without precedent.