NYT editorial: The Court’s Aggressive Term

John Roberts Jr., the chief justice of the United States, did not write the most important opinion of his court’s just concluded term, the one that allowed unlimited corporate and union spending in election campaigns. But his concurring opinion in that case, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, is the best guide to the court’s most unsettling tendency.

In the most recent term, even more than in earlier years, the Roberts court demonstrated its determination to act aggressively to undo aspects of law it found wanting, no matter the cost.

Explaining why the court’s five-vote majority in Citizens United had toppled precedent to reach its decision, Justice Roberts wrote that the court must be willing to depart from a previous decision if it thinks it does damage to a constitutional ideal, and particularly if the precedent was an aberration. A decision can become an aberration, it turns out, if the court’s conservatives never agreed with it in the first place. If not quite legislating from the bench, this is not a formula for stability.

It was not a thoroughly disappointing term. But the tone and posture of the court’s conservative majority made clear that it is not done asserting itself in redefining campaign finance laws, the rights of corporations, national security powers and the ownership of guns.

(More here.)