Source: https://www.baker-law.net/WRITING_EXEMPLAR.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 10:36:42+00:00

Document:
The Clerk of the U.S. Supreme Court calls you up regarding the big free speech case you’ve spent years defending on behalf of the government and only just argued before the high Court. The Clerk says to you, "An opinion has been issued, and I’ve got good news and bad news for you. What would you like to hear first?"
"Well, the good news, I suppose," you reply anxiously.
The Clerk begins, "The good news is that the vote was 5-4, and that Justice O’Connor joined in favor of the government’s position."
"Wow, that’s great, the swing vote!" you respond ecstatically. "So what could possibly be the bad news?"
"Well," the Clerk says, "the bad news is that Justice O’Connor’s swing vote swung to the dissent."
In 1996, Congress passed the Omnibus Consolidated Rescissions and Appropriations Act (OCRAA), which precluded program recipients of LSC funds from participating in "litigation, lobbying, or rulemaking, involving an effort to reform a Federal or State welfare system." (fn10)"From the beginning, it was apparent that the congressional attack on the legal services program was ideological and punitive," according to Steven R. Shapiro, ACLU National Legal Director. (fn11) The suggestion that the 1996 Republican-controlled Congress proposed and passed the OCRAA with a facial justification to "limit the federal government’s role in the private sphere," (fn12) the result of which was necessarily to silence government-funded voices advocating welfare reform, would seem in hindsight after Velazquez to be not far from the mark.
The plaintiffs in Velazquez initially filed suit in the Eastern District of New York in January 1997, claiming, inter alia, that the congressional restrictions on the use of federal funds with regard to the LSC violated the First Amendment. (fn13) The plaintiffs sought as relief a preliminary injunction to halt the implementation of the alleged unconstitutional restrictions, among which was the specific restriction that barred LSC attorneys from challenging welfare laws, a restriction the plaintiffs saw as a bar to their right of free speech under the First Amendment.
On February 28, 2001, a divided U.S. Supreme Court affirmed 5-4 the 2nd Circuit’s decision in an opinion written by Justice Kennedy, and joined by Justices Souter, Stevens, Ginsburg, and Breyer. Noticeably absent from, and more notably not necessary for, the majority opinion which in effect invalidated a congressional enactment that the liberal faction of the Court found contrary to the First Amendment, was the usual and customary swing vote of Justice O’Connor.
Justice Kennedy’s opinion in Velazquez is succinctly brief and to the point, amounting to only about four typewritten pages, and considerably less lengthy than Scalia’s terse dissent. Nevertheless, Kennedy’s highly annotated discourse flows easily with the force of simple yet undeniable logic, reason, and conviction, and convincingly conveys not only the letter of the majority opinion, but seemingly its spirit as well. The message of Velazquez is clear, though multi-faceted, and thus its import is distributed across a wide range of legal issues involving free speech, attorneys’ professional responsibility, judicial power, and court imposed limitations on congressional authority. Each of these legal issues by and of themselves is worthy fodder for the Supreme Court, but the combination of all of these four issues in one case arguably makes Velazquez unique even among the rarified and shrinking number of cases to which the high Court grants certiorari each year. A brief overview of these individual issues in the Velazquez decision is worthwhile so that the entirety of its message can be appreciated.
The free speech component in Velazquez centers on the question of exactly what kind of speech is at issue in the case, that is, private speech versus government speech. The United States as interpleader, as well as the LSC, relied heavily on the Court’s 1991 decision in Rust v. Sullivan as support for the LSC restrictions. (fn17) The physician plaintiffs in Rust asserted that certain congressional restrictions constituted impermissible viewpoint discrimination and imposed an unconstitutional condition by requiring them to relinquish their right to engage in abortion advocacy. (fn18) Nevertheless, the Court upheld the congressional act forbidding the physicians who received federal government subsidies for family planning clinics from discussing abortion with their patients.
The Rust Court, in an opinion written by Chief Justice Rehnquist--and joined by Kennedy in the 5-4 decision--reasoned that Congress had not discriminated against viewpoints about abortion, but rather had "merely chosen to fund one activity to the exclusion of the other" so to "ensure that the limits of the federal program [were] observed." (fn19) Kennedy’s Velazquez opinion sharply distinguished Rust, however, from several angles. To begin, Kennedy concedes that viewpoint-based funding decisions can and have been sustained in instances where the government is itself the speaker, or in instances such as Rust where the government uses "private speakers to transmit information pertaining to its own program." (fn20) However, the salient point, Kennedy asserts, is that the LSC was not designed to promote a governmental message at all. Rather, Congress funded the LSC in order to provide attorneys who could represent the interests of indigent clients. (fn21) In short, the program was designed to promote private speech, and as an LSC attorney speaks on behalf of the client against the government for welfare benefits, the LSC lawyer cannot possibly be the government’s speaker, and thus would not be constitutionally amenable to congressional restriction.
The strength and forthrightness of Kennedy’s, and the Court’s, words in Velazquez seem to underscore the import of the very words, the free speech, which were at issue in the case, words perhaps made more important by the circumstances of their utterance--that circumstance being the full and vigorous advocacy of a lawyer for the rights of a client. The clarity and weight of the message sent by Kennedy and the Court to the bar, to Congress, to the government, and to the public at large regarding the quintessential nature and sanctity of our advocacy-centered legal system arguably make Velazquez one of the most important decisions handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 21st century.
Kennedy’s experience as a former U.S. Court of Appeals judge seemed to serve him well in acclimating to the high Court, and it has been reported that the Chief Justice has often relied upon Kennedy to build bridges between the conservative and liberals factions of Court. (fn26) Yet, for those who follow, even casually, such things as the voting alignments of the Justices in particular Court decisions have over the past decade and a half usually perceived Justice Sandra Day O’Connor as wielding the so-called "swing" vote and who has garnered the most media attention and commentary for that role.
However, it has also been quite clear to those who follow the Court not so casually that the other half of the centrist bloc, Justice Kennedy, has always been since his arrival at the Court an important "swing" vote in many cases. (fn27) Whether it is because Justice O’Connor is just naturally a warmer personality, or whether it’s because Justice Kennedy has usually tended to shy away from any undue celebrity as a Supreme Court Justice, it seems apparent that the man-on-the-street perception is that O’Connor has for the most part been the do-or-die vote on the Rehnquist Court. With Velazquez, as well as Ragsdale now, a certain sea change appears to be occurring on the Court, and that sea change appears to be the assertion of Justice Kennedy as currently the most critical vote to sway if a Supreme Court practitioner aspires to claim a majority in any close case.
It might possibly be suggested that Kennedy has of late been cultivating a certain amount of self-empowerment on the high Court through the exercise of what may appear to be to some as an unpredictable swing vote. However, that sort of self-engrandisement strikes this writer as unlikely for a man whose consistency and competence has earned him a well-deserved reputation among his peers, and who has throughout his tenure on the Court remained loyal to his past record of decisions on many issues. (fn28) For example, Kennedy has always remained firmly conservative on crime issues and has repeatedly refused to broaden the scope of his opinions in that arena of the law. (fn29) It appears more likely, in the final analysis, that it is merely the respect and admiration Justice Kennedy has earned from his brethren colleagues over the years, coupled with an ability and personality that can win over allies and form unlikely coalitions, that has inevitably lead to the emergence of his vote as the most important swing vote upon the U.S. Supreme Court today.
The unique combination encompassing both the message, and the messenger, of the Velazquez decision arguably propels its import to the very upper reaches of the cases handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 21st century. In this era of the Court, where so many close votes of 5-4 determine the compass headings of our legal system, Velazquez serves to remind us that it is the cacophony of voices, whether they be heard in the trial courts advocating a client’s right to public welfare benefits, or whether they be heard in the highest Court of the land among the Justices themselves whose role it is to impart guidance to the bar as well as the judiciary, is still an integral, vital, and vibrant facet of American jurisprudence, a facet that without which would surely make our democracy and our legal system far less luminescent not only in our own eyes, but also in those of much of the rest of the free, and longing to be free, world as well.
(fn1) Legal Services Corporation v. Velazquez, 121 S.Ct. 1043 (2001).
(fn2) Press Release dated February 28, 2001, American Civil Liberties Union (visited March 23, 2002) <http://www.aclu.org/news/2001/n022801a.html>.
(fn3) Velazquez, 121 S.Ct. at 1052.
(fn4) Ragsdale v. Wolverine World Wide, Inc., 122 S.Ct. 1155 (2002).
(fn5) Jerry Goldman, The Oyez Project, Northwestern University (visited April 9, 2002) <http://oyez.nwu.edu/justices/justices.cgi?justice_id=104&page=biography>.
(fn6) Velazquez, 121 S.Ct. at 1051.
(fn7) Legal Services Corporation, What is LSC? (visited April 4, 2002) <http://www.lsc.gov/welcome/wel_who.htm>.
(fn11) Press Release dated February 28, 2001, American Civil Liberties Union (visited March 23, 2002) <http://www.aclu.org/news/2001/n022801a.html>.
(fn12) Heather McDonald, On the Docket, Medill School of Journalism (visited February 2, 2002) <http://www.medill.northwestern.edu/docket/cases.srch?-database=docket&-layout=lasso&-res>.
(fn13) Velazquez v. Legal Services Corporation, 164 F. 3d 757, 757 (2nd Cir. 1999).
(fn15) Legal Services Corporation v. Velazquez, 120 S.Ct. 1559 (2000).
(fn16) Heather McDonald, On the Docket, Medill School of Journalism (visited February 2, 2002) <http://www.medill.northwestern.edu/docket/cases.srch?-database=docket&-layout=lasso&-res>.
(fn17) Rust v. Sullivan, 500 U.S. 173 (1991).
(fn20) Legal Services Corporation v. Velazquez. at 541.
(fn25) Jerry Goldman, The Oyez Project, Northwestern University (visited April 9, 2002) http://oyez.nwu.edu/justices/justices.cgi?justice_id=104&page=biography.

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