That day, it was David Souter, who was just a few weeks away from announcing his departure from the Court. A well-mannered Midwesterner, he invariably lets one of his colleagues ask the first questions. Unlike his predecessor, William Rehnquist, Roberts rarely shows irritation or frustration on the bench. Roberts’s voice bears a flat-vowelled trace of his origins, in Indiana. Olson, the lawyer for Citizens United, to the podium. After all, how many nonprofits wanted to run documentaries about Presidential candidates, using relatively obscure technologies, just before elections?Ĭhief Justice John G. There did not seem to be a lot riding on the outcome. had prohibited the broadcast under McCain-Feingold, and Citizens United had challenged the decision. During that period, Citizens United, a nonprofit corporation, had wanted to run a documentary, as a cable video on demand, called “Hillary: The Movie,” which was critical of Hillary Clinton. The McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law prohibited corporations from running television commercials for or against Presidential candidates for thirty days before primaries. The issue before the Justices was a narrow one. Federal Election Commission was first argued before the Supreme Court, on March 24, 2009, it seemed like a case of modest importance. By having the case reargued, Roberts put the liberals in a box and transformed the decision’s impact on political campaigns.
0 kommentar(er)
