Clark, Perdue & List's Blog

The Supreme Court's decisions as of late underscore a U.S. President's power to influence the laws of the land, long after leaving office. Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito, both appointed by President Bush early in his second term, recently joined Justice Anthony Kennedy and their conservatives colleagues, Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, to form the Majority in three decisions that clearly evidence the Court's move to the right. In these 5-4 rulings, the Court loosened rules on political contributions by corporate and union interest groups, limited free speech, and prevented a legal challenge to a White House initiative that promotes the obtaining of government funds by religious charities.

In 2003, with Justice Sandra Day O'Connor in the Majority, the Court upheld the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law that barred deep-pocketed interest groups from running ads that mentioned a candidate's name within a certain period of time from an election. But in the Court's most recent campaign-finance decision, Justice Alito, who replaced Justice O'Connor, concurred with Justice Roberts' observation that "Where the First Amendment is implicated, the tie goes to the speaker, not the censor."

Apparently taking an inconsistent position in his opinion in the "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" case, however, Justice Roberts supported the limiting of First Amendment rights by holding that schools could regulate student speech that advocates the use of illegal drugs. The case arose from the suspension from high school of an Alaskan student who had displayed the banner. While the Bush administration and school district had wanted a decision that would permit the regulation of any speech that officials found to be counter to the educational mission, Justice Stevens nevertheless noted in his Dissent that the Majority does serious violence to the First Amendment "in upholding - indeed lauding - a school's decision to punish Frederick for expressing a view with which it disagreed."

Justice Alito wrote for the Majority in the Court's third decision, which precluded taxpayers from challenging a White House program that assists religious charities in obtaining federal money. In this latter case, a lawsuit brought by a group of atheists and agnostics who objected to government conferences in which administration officials urged religious charities to apply for federal grants was blocked.
As the Court nears the end of its term, it has yet to decide what can perhaps be viewed as its most important issue of the year: whether public school districts can take race into account when assigning students to schools. Given these recent rulings which signal a definite conservative trend, many observers expect a similar split of opinion, with the Majority limiting the use of race.