Some unexpected words from one of the greatest Supreme Court analysts of our time:

Now, briefly, to Caperton. This was, indeed, a very odd exercise. The case was latched onto by a whole bunch of well-meaning folks who thought they could use it as a poster child for what’s wrong with a system in which judges must run for election and raise money to do so. But its facts are so extreme that it can in no way be described as typical, and it produced an opinion so qualified and so tied to those facts, it’s impossible to state the holding accurately in a way that has any utility for the nonextreme, and hence less visible and perhaps more troubling, situations that come up when judges have to run for office or retention. The real fight in this case was evidently in conference, in a closed-door debate that went on for weeks over whether to grant it. I’m sorry that they did: The case promised more than it could possibly deliver, while doing very little to clarify a judge’s duties in ethically ambiguous situations. But the game was over with the grant of cert–once this case was run up the flagpole, it was quite foreseeable that Justice Kennedy would have to salute rather than be seen as shrugging off the behavior that went on here. Tony Mauro had an enlightening interview with Tom Phillips, the former chief justice of Texas, who suggests that very little will come of Caperton in the end.