Kagan Botches Oral Argument In Supreme Court Appearance At Citizens United Lawsuit

RealClearPolitics ^ | 5-10-2010 | Hot Air

[raybbr]

Hot Air explains how Solicitor General Elena Kagan muffed her argument in front of the Supreme Court on the Citizens United v. FEC case: In fact, the crux of the case was the issue of limiting expenditures as an expression of political speech, not contributions. Kagan started off her argument by misconstruing the issue and then offering a factually incorrect reading of precedent. Both Scalia and Kennedy objected to it before Kagan even had time to get the argument completed, although as the transcript notes, she didn’t pay much attention to them.

Transcript below:

ORAL ARGUMENT OF ELENA KAGAN

ON BEHALF OF THE APPELLEE GENERAL KAGAN: Mr. Chief Justice and may it please the Court:

I have three very quick points to make about the government position. The first is that this issue has a long history. For over 100 years Congress has made a judgment that corporations must be subject to special rules when they participate in elections and this Court has never questioned that judgment.

Number two -

JUSTICE SCALIA: Wait, wait, wait, wait. We never questioned it, but we never approved it, either. And we gave some really weird interpretations to the Taft-Hartley Act in order to avoid confronting the question.

GENERAL KAGAN: I will repeat what I said, Justice Scalia: For 100 years this Court, faced with many opportunities to do so, left standing the legislation that is at issue in this case — first the contribution limits, then the expenditure limits that came in by way of Taft-Hartley — and then of course in Austin specifically approved those limits.

[Mountain Mary]

Perfect Jaxter, thanks...