Did questions from Chief Justice John Roberts signal that he is more of a friend to political speech than his predecessor?

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. expressed doubts yesterday about legal restrictions on political ads by outside groups as the Supreme Court took up a new challenge to the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law.

Questioning Solicitor General Paul D. Clement, who was defending the law, Chief Justice Roberts raised a hypothetical case in which a group runs an issue ad every month. Does the ad, he asked, become illegal in the months before an election?

Mr. Clement responded that such a group could continue to run the ads if it used political action committee money to pay for them, or if it refrained from identifying a candidate by name.

But Justice Antonin Scalia said that would undercut the purpose of the ad, adding, "The point of an issue ad is to put pressure on an incumbent you want to vote your way."

At issue is a provision banning the use of corporate or union money for ads that identify federal candidates two months before a general election. The case involves a lawsuit by Wisconsin Right to Life, which was barred from broadcasting ads that mentioned Sen. Russell D. Feingold, Wisconsin Democrat, during his 2004 re-election campaign.

In the first challenge to how the law was working in practice, the group in 2004 sought an injunction barring the Federal Election Commission from enforcing the provision against it. But the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia denied the request. A month later, then-Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist declined the group's request to intervene.

Chief Justice Roberts suggested that the fact that the ad also mentioned the state's other senator -- Democrat Herb Kohl, who was not up for re-election that year -- buttressed the group's argument that the ad was meant to influence legislation, not the election.

Now, if the members of the High Court will only consider the meaning of the words "Congress shall make no law" at the beginning of the First Amendment, it may be that we will see some movement towards the sort of restrictions on political speech that the Founders would have accepted -- namely NONE.

Posted by: Greg at 11:22 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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1 Agreed! What part of 'free speech' don't our idiotic politicians understand? Regardless of their beloved 'intent', it's wrong and illegal to regulate speech!

It's nice to see another conservative voice speaking of the First Amendment the same way most conservatives speak of the Second Amendment.



-Bart

Posted by: Bartleby at Wed Jan 18 02:49:27 2006 (lkCzp)

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