"Sorry Now? What do the liberal and moderate lawyers who supported John Roberts' nomination say today?"

Emily Bazelon has this fascinating piece at Slate going back to liberals and moderates who supported the Roberts nomination and asking them what they think now about their choice. My favorite quote here is Cass Sunstein's: "I'm surprised that Roberts has shown no unpredictability at all; in the big cases, he's been so consistent in his conservatism. I thought that he was too careful a lawyer to be so predictable!"

Not all liberals and moderates took this view. In August 2005, I published Roberts' Iffy Support for Voting Rights in the LA Times. See also this Findlaw column on Justice Alito's nomination, noting: "In the last four decades, the Court has set out rules on everything from campaign finance to gerrymandering to minority voting rights -- even intervening in the 2000 presidential election fight in Florida in Bush v. Gore. And, in recent years, Justice O'Connor, whom Judge Alito might replace, has held the swing vote in the most important of these cases. For all these reasons, the Senate must press Judge Alito to clarify his views in this area. Judge Alito's views on these cases could be decisive on the Supreme Court, and the consequences for our political system could be enormous."

And in an academic piece written as Justice Alito joined Justice Roberts on the Court, No Exit? The Roberts Court and the Future of Election Law, I concluded:

Making predictions is always dangerous, and the conclusions I reach should be taken in the tentative spirit in which they are made. My best guess is that a decade from now, we may well face a set of election law rules that differ a great deal from today's rules. It may be that in 2016, individuals, corporations, and unions will be free to give as much money as they want to any candidate or group, subject to the filing of disclosure reports. The federal government's ability to protect the voting rights of minority groups that historically have been the victims of state discrimination may be curtailed by the inability of Congress to require any jurisdictions to submit their voting changes for preclearance and by an emasculated reading of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The ability of states to manipulate election rules for partisan gain may present the greatest danger as the Court exits from that corner of the political thicket. For those who look to courts for the promotion of political equality, the signs are not encouraging.

Time will tell how close my remaining predictions come to political reality.

Posted by Rick Hasen at June 29, 2007 09:30 AM