The Chief by Joan Biskupic

Author:Joan Biskupic
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2019-03-04T16:00:00+00:00

THE COURT’S CAMPAIGN FINANCE RULINGS HAD SUPPORTERS, INCLUDING Senate Majority Leader McConnell, who believed corporations had been “deprived of full participation in the political process.” The critics were louder, more persistent, and often targeted Roberts. The Brookings Institution’s Thomas Mann said Citizens United “made a mockery” of Roberts’s “pious statements” about judicial modesty during his confirmation hearings.38

Perhaps the strongest denunciation came in January 2010, just six days after Citizens United was handed down, from President Obama at his first State of the Union Address. Six of the nine justices, including Roberts, were in front-row seats in the House of Representatives chamber.

“Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law,” Obama declared, “to open the floodgates for special interests—including foreign corporations—to spend without limit in our elections.… I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, and worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people, and that’s why I’m urging Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to right this wrong.”39

At that moment, caught on national television, Justice Alito shook his head and mouthed the words, “not true,” an apparent reaction to Obama’s contention—in error—that Citizens United lifted rules for foreign contributions. The moment went viral, offering a public example of the clash between the Obama administration and the Roberts Court over campaign finance law.40

Afterward, Roberts revealed his displeasure at the State of the Union to an audience at the University of Alabama. “The image of having the members of one branch of government standing up, literally surrounding the Supreme Court, cheering and hollering while the Court—according to the requirements of protocol—has to sit there expressionless, I think is very troubling,” Roberts said two months after the Citizens United ruling. “To the extent it has degenerated into a political pep rally, I’m not sure why we’re there.”41 He repeated his admonition that the Court was above politics.

It just so happened that during the negotiations among the justices over the first round of the Citizens United case in 2009, Roberts had sat for an extensive interview with C-SPAN. He had tried to lay out the Court’s mission and explain how it differs from the work of politics. “All we’re doing is interpreting the law,” he said. “The decision has been made by Congress and the president and we’re just exercising our responsibility to say what the law is. We’re not ruling in favor of one side or in favor of another.”

Roberts emphasized how distinct the justices were from elected politicians. “The most important thing for the public to understand is that we are not a political branch of government,” he said. “They don’t elect us. If they don’t like what we’re doing, it’s more or less just too bad.”42

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