I know everyone has various opinions about the SCOTUS ruling the other day regarding McCain/Feingold Campaign Finance Reform. But take a look at this snippet from Chief Justice Roberts explaining the majority opinion and their point of view !!


In his concurrence in yesterday’s landmark free speech case Citizens United v. F.E.C., Roberts elaborated on when it is acceptable for the Court to overturn precedent:
... if adherence to a precedent actually impedes the stable and orderly adjudication of future cases, its stare decisis effect is also diminished. This can happen in a number of circumstances, such as when the precedent’s validity is so hotly contested that it cannot reliably function as a basis for decision in future cases, when its rationale threatens to upend our settled jurisprudence in related areas of law, and when the precedent’s underlying reasoning has become so discredited that the Court cannot keep the precedent alive without jury-rigging new and different justifications to shore up the original mistake.



Thats HUGE !! Even some of the most liberal Constitutional Scholars have already said that the Slaughterhouse Rulings were terrible decisions and should be overturned. Scalia last year chastised the lower Circuit Courts, telling them to ignore cases from the 1800's ( Cruickshank ,Presser) and look to more recent cases in this Century.


Its getting really hard not be extremely confident that we're going to get a big win in McDonald, even more so now that Roberts just gave us a peek into the Courts viewpoint of continuing to rely on completely discredited precedent. Is it to late for Alan Gura to insert Roberts own remarks about discarding unsustainable precedents into his arguement ?


BTW , case is scheduled to be argued on March 2.



Thoughts ?