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. . . last term, Roberts played a . . . savvy game in Williams-Yulee v. The Florida Bar, a judicial campaign speech case. Williams-Yulee involved a Florida rule that forbade judicial candidates from personally soliciting campaign contributions. We don’t yet have an inside account of how the justices first split on Williams-Yulee, but it’s pretty clear—from the final opinions and from oral arguments—that Roberts had a dual agenda. First, he wanted to uphold the measure, an extraordinarily sensible and slight rule designed to prevent judicial panhandling and preserve judicial impartiality. (Roberts can be almost winsomely obsessive about maintaining America’s trust in judges.) Second, he wanted to retain the stringent “strict scrutiny” standard for laws that restrict judicial candidates’ speech, allowing Florida’s rule to survive while reminding states that any suppression of such speech must be narrowly tailored.
The other four conservatives were eager to strike down the Florida rule; the four liberals wanted to uphold it, but almost certainly preferred a lower standard of scrutiny. Ultimately, Roberts split the baby: He sided with the liberals to uphold the measure, but agreed with the conservatives that judicial speech laws must be subject to strict scrutiny. The compromise drew two grumbling opinions from Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer about the unsuitability of strict scrutiny in the judicial campaign context. But both justices signed onto the bulk of Roberts’ majority opinion, allowing the chief to strike a deft balance between the two blocs.
