Even those of us who have some doubt that Justice Sonia Sotomayor will be as liberal as some hope and others fear overwhelmingly supported her confirmation because of her extremely impressive qualifications for the position. But one always has to be a bit cautious about conflating an Appellate Judge's more limited jurisprudence with what they would do once on the Supreme Court. So court observers should find her questions during oral arguments on Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission very interesting and significant.
Here's a quick background on the case:
Issue: Whether federal campaign finance laws apply to a critical film about Senator Hillary Clinton intended to be shown in theaters and on-demand to cable subscribers. After hearing argument, the Court ordered re-argument, to focus on the constitutionality of limiting corporations’ independent spending during campaigns for the Presidency and Congress.
In other words, a majority of the Court decided not to narrowly focus on the case at hand, but instead, to use the case as a vehicle to debate whether to overturn all limitations whatsoever on corporate spending on election campaigns. Of course, after oral reargument, they could choose to re-narrow their focus; according to ScotusBlog:
On Wednesday, there was no hint that a Court majority would back off this time, but that conceivably could happen.
And the majority appears to favor an end to any restrictions on corporate election campaign spending.
So with all this bad news - covered very ably by calchala in the September 7 diary, "Supreme Court may overturn McCain-Feingold" - why do I prefer to focus on Justice Sotomayor's first argument? Keeping in mind that if the Court does decide to overturn all such restrictions, it will almost definitely be a 5-4 vote, the jurisprudence of the newest Justice could help blaze a different path when the composition of the Court changes. So pay attention when she says this:
[T]he Court’s "error to start with" may have been its decision decades ago to treat corporations as "persons" for constitutional purposes.
If Justice Sotomayor keeps up with this line of thinking, she will truly represent a great progressive change on a much too corporate-friendly Court.