James Fallows makes an excellent point about Chief Justice Roberts' anti-conservatism:
The head of the nation's judicial branch was purposefully deceptive during his "umpire" [confirmation] testimony. Or he had no idea what his words meant. Or he has had a complete change of philosophy and temperament while in his mid-50s. Those are the logical possibilities. None of them is too encouraging about the basic soundness of our governing institutions.
The majority voting in Citizens United v FEC overturned 100 years of legislative compromises by fiat. Fallows' colleague Megan McArdle thinks this is fine:
The description in the first paragraph could just as easily describe sodomy law before Lawrence v. Texas, civil rights law pre-Brown, or indeed, the state of abortion law pre-Roe. Had Roberts voted for the majority in one of these cases, would we be hearing the same anguish about his lack of deference to precedent?
Two things. First, those cases all dealt with the rights of living persons, not "persons" under the vastly-expanded definition of the term that occurred during the robber-baron era at the turn of the 20th century. Corporations didn't suffer arrest and persecution because they couldn't give millions to their favorite political causes. Second, those cases all brought some state laws into conformance with Federal law, without creating whole new law out of thin air.
Citizens United opens up a brand new era of corporatism. As Slate's Dahlia Litwick pointed out on "Marketplace" last night, "During 2008 alone Exxon Mobil generated profits of $45 billion, with the diversion of even 2 percent of those profits to the political process, this one company could have outspent both presidential candidates and fundamentally changed the dynamics of the 2008 elections." The arguments in favor of unrestricted corporate money in politics are seductive, but ultimately destructive of democracy. I worry that we're headed toward even greater income inequality in the U.S. This decision will hasten it.