Glynn Wilson

We call this a yellow bell plant, but I’m not sure it’s the real thing, an Allamanda. In any event, in these suburban climes, this is the first blooming bush of the spring season in Middle Alabamaland…

A Hard Lesson in Why Elections Matter

Analysis:
by Glynn Wilson

The arch-conservative University of Alabama Law School, with an active Federalist Society chapter, was the perfectly sympathetic setting this week for what most American legal experts would consider shockingly inappropriate political remarks by the Chief Justice of the United State Supreme Court.

While the University of Alabama national championship football team was being honored at the White House by President Barack Obama this week, Chief Justice John Roberts traveled to Tuscaloosa to deliver an incredibly boring academic speech, which wasn’t the point of his visit. Not one news organization quoted from it in their report.

Roberts knew full well he would be asked about the still stinging controversy between the conservative wing of the court and the president over a recent ruling favoring corporations in funding political campaigns, and remarks from the president during his first State of the Union address. And he knew he would have a sympathetic crowd with no protesters, since Alabama is a conservative state about as deeply enmeshed in the corrupt politicization of justice as any in the country.

The nation’s high court issued a 5 to 4 ruling in January that overturned a century of precedent on the ability of Congress to limit corporate contributions to political campaigns, a precedent that dates to the time of muckraking journalists and President Theodore Roosevelt’s Trust Busting days against the powerful influence of early monopoly corporations such as Standard Oil.

The Roberts court, or really the Bush court since President George W. Bush appointed two of the most conservative members, including Roberts, ruled that corporations and unions have a First Amendment right to use their general treasuries and profits to spend freely on political ads for and against specific candidates. That ruling overturned previous Supreme Court precedents and well established federal law.

While the decision was hailed by conservatives, libertarians and a few liberals as a victory for free political speech, Obama denounced it in the State of the Union address, saying it overturned a century of established legal precedent and would lead to the bankrolling of elections “by America’s most powerful interests.”

It was a powerful moment when the president said it looking down at the members of the Supreme Court, required by tradition to be present for the address, sitting right in the front row of the House chamber.

But the controversy didn’t end there. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., another Bush appointee, violated judicial custom, according to experts, by silently mouthing “not true” when the president made the remark about it overturning a century of precedent.

When Roberts was asked about the moment by a law student at Alabama, he said anybody can criticize the Supreme Court “without any qualm.”

“Some people, I think, have an obligation to criticize what we do, given their office,” he said, “if they think we’ve done something wrong.”

But Roberts didn’t stop there.

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