Text of Justice Sotomayor's questions today

[usregimechange]

JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: Mr. Olson, are you giving up on your earlier arguments that there are ways to avoid the constitutional question to resolve this case? I know that we asked for further briefing on this particular issue of overturning two of our Court's precedents. But are you giving up on your earlier arguments that there are statutory interpretations that would avoid the constitutional question? ...

JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: Mr. Olson, my difficulty is that you make very impassioned arguments about why this is a bad system that the courts have developed in its jurisprudence, but we don't have any record developed below. You make a lot of arguments about how far and the nature of corporations, single corporations, single stockholder corporations, et cetera. But there is no record that I am reviewing that actually goes into the very question that you're arguing exists, which is a patchwork of regulatory and jurisprudential guidelines that are so unclear...

JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: Going back to the question of stare decisis, the one thing that is very interesting about this area of law for the last 100 years is the active involvement of both State and Federal legislatures in trying to find that balance between the interest of protecting in their views how the electoral process should proceed and the interests of the First Amendment.
And so my question to you is, once we say they can't, except on the basis of a compelling government interest narrowly tailored, are we cutting off or would we be cutting off that future democratic process? Because what you are suggesting is that the courts who created corporations as persons, gave birth to corporations as persons, and there could be an argument made that that was the Court's error to start with, not Austin or McConnell, but the fact that the Court imbued a creature of State law with human characteristics.

But we can go back to the very basics that way, but wouldn't we be doing some more harm than good by a broad ruling in a case that doesn't involve more business corporations and actually doesn't even involve the traditional nonprofit organization? It involves an advocacy corporation that has a very particular interest.

http://www.supremecourtus.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/08-205%5BReargued%5D.pdf

[orwell]

1. It looks like...

...the "IQ" of the court just went up about 40 points

[4lbs]

2. Justice Clarence Thomas to Justice Sotomayor: "Showoff!" Then he goes back to sleep.

:D

[usregimechange]

3. Did he say anything? Not sure if he was even there.

[4lbs]

4. He's always there. He usually only wakes up when it's time for Justice Scalia to tell him how to

vote on a case.

[elleng]

5. List of Thomas' opinions. He works as do all of them.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/cases/judges/toj_thomas.html