Heeere's Johnny.

No matther whether th' constitution follows th' flag or not, th' supreme coort follows th' iliction returns.
- Finley Peter Dunne, The Supreme Court's Decision

It
seemed rude, but Sammy was just coming to the defense of a colleague.
It happened during the State of the Union address when Sammy mouthed
the words "Not true" in response to the President's comments about a
recently decided U.S. Supreme Court case. Johnny was still smarting,
insofar as a Chief Justice of the United States ever smarts, from the
fact that that decision demonstrated that when testifying before the
Senate Judiciary Committee at his confirmation hearing, he had his
fingers crossed.

One of the issues that concerned some of
the senators during that hearing was whether Judge Roberts's ideology
would cause him to ignore the established principle of stare decisis
that says courts should give great weight to judicial precedent and be
slow to overturn established law. The reasons for the rule were best
expressed by Judge Roberts himself when in response to questions from
Senator Arlen Specter he said:

"I
do think that it is a jolt to the legal system when you overrule a
precedent. Precedent plays an important role in promoting stability and
evenhandedness. It is not enough-and the court has emphasized this on
several occasions-it is not enough that you may think the prior
decision was wrongly decided. That really doesn't answer the question,
it just poses the question.
And you do look at these other factors, like settled expectations, like
the legitimacy of the court, like whether a particular precedent is
workable or not, whether a precedent has been eroded by subsequent
developments. All of those factors go into the determination of whether
to revisit a precedent under the principles of stare decisis.
. . . If a[n] overruling of a prior precedent is a jolt to the legal
system, it is inconsistent with principles of stability. . . . [T]he
principles of stare decisis recognize that there are situations when that's a price that has to be paid."

On January 21, 2010, in the case of Citizens United v Federal Election Commission,
the Chief Justice was part of the 5 person majority that overruled
decades of established law to find that the law limiting corporate
expenditures in political campaigns is unconstitutional even though, as
Justice Stevens observed in his dissent, the Court had adequate grounds
to rule in favor of the plaintiffs without holding the statute
unconstitutional. Mindful of his senate testimony, the Chief Justice
wrote a 14-page mea culpa (in legal parlance called a
concurring opinion) explaining why his vote to overrule earlier cases
did not overrule his testimony before the U.S. Senate. What was notable
about the Chief Justice's concurring opinion was not so much what he
wrote as to how it came to be written.

Citizens
was first argued before the Supreme Court in March, 2009 and a decision
was expected by late June. Instead, on June 29th the Court announced
that it had set the case for reargument one month before its regular
fall term was to begin and set a schedule for the filing of briefs. It
said that it wanted the hear argument on the very issues that the
parties had stipulated were not being presented to the Court. It asked
the parties to advise it whether it should overrule either or both of
two prior rulings on campaign finance law. Justice Stevens observes in
his 94 page dissent that the parties had agreed that neither side was
attacking the constitutionality of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act
of 2002 insofar as it prevented corporations from making independent
expenditures for speech that is an "electioneering communication" or
that expressly advocates the election or defeat of a candidate.
Commenting on the procedural issues, Justice Stevens said that although
there was initially a "facial challenge to the constitutionality of
Section 203 [of the Act]" . . . . [i]n its motion for summary judgment
. . . Citizens United expressly abandoned its facial challenge. . . and
the parties stipulated to the dismissal of that claim." He observes
that the Court typically does not anticipate a question of
constitutional law in advance of the necessity of deciding it nor
formulate a rule of constitutional law broader than is required by the
precise fact to which it is to be applied.

Only time will tell whether Citizens
will open the monetary floodgates to corporate involvement in political
campaigns since corporations can now make independent expenditures in
support of candidates or parties. What no one can debate is that by
joining the members of the Court who said the case should be reframed
and reargued so that the Court could overrule earlier decisions, the
Chief Justice made a mockery of his statements to the Senate Judiciary
Committee. Not that it matters. He now is where he wanted to be and no
one can touch him.