I have written this analysis for the SCOTUSBlog McCutcheon symposium.  It begins:

Chief Justice Roberts has moved the Supreme Court’s election law jurisprudence steadily and stealthily in his preferred direction.  Usually this involves subtle shifts in doctrine, the planting and later reliance on key dicta, and hints of future lawsuits to come. This is as true of Roberts’s opinions in the voting rights arena as it is in campaign finance.  As I explain at Slate, yesterday’s decision in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission uses all of these tools.  The Chief’s opinion constricts the definition of corruption, ramps up ever so subtly the scrutiny of contribution limits, and all but invites a challenge to the remaining pillar of the McCain-Feingold law:  the soft money ban.  It is hard to see what will be left of campaign finance law beyond disclosure in a few years.

In this post I wanted to focus on a different tool the Chief Justice uses in these controversial election cases:  ostensible reliance on the political branches to militate the harshness of the Court’s opinions.