The Math of 5-4 Summary Reversals (or, What I Don't Get About Bullock)

I'm late to the party re: the Supreme Court's 5-4 summary reversal yesterday in the "Citizens United sequel," American Tradition Partnership, Inc. v. Bullock. More to the point, I'm not an expert on campaign finance law specifically, or the First Amendment generally, so I'm not sure I have much to add to the various substantive reactions percolating around / pervading the blogosphere. Instead, the fed courts nerd in me gravitated toward the oddity of the disposition--a 5-4 per curiam summary reversal. While there have cerainly been 5-4 per curiams before, and 5-4 decisions without argument (see Garcia v. Texas for an example of both), off the top of my head, I couldn't think of a single 5-4 summary reversal--and my copy of Stern & Gressman is 4000 miles (and one very big ocean) away.

The reason why 5-4 summary reversals are so unusual is actually somewhat straightforward: As we know, it only takes four votes to grant a petition for certiorari, whereas it (usually) takes five votes for dispositions on the merits--including summary reversals. Whether because it would undermine the four-to-grant rule or for some other reason, the Court by tradition has historically given precedence to four votes for plenary review over five votes for a summary reversal. Thus, a 5-4 summary reversal could only occur if both (1) exactly four Justices object to a summary reversal; and (2) not all of those four want plenary review. [Note that this also explains why the old belief in a "rule of six" for summary reversals probably was never true--five will suffice so long as the other four don't all prefer plenary review.] And needless to say, although either scenario is relatively common, their confluence is not, for reasons I elaborate upon below the fold...  

One possibile situation in which such an outcome could occur is where the four dissenters would have summarily affirmed the decision below--and are therefore dissenting on the merits, rather than on the summary disposition (an example of this appears to be the Court's last 5-4 summary reversal: Riggan v. Virginia, 384 U.S. 152 (1968), which I found through this blog post). For obvious reasons, I have to think that this is a vanishingly small set of cases.

The second way such an outcome could arise is what happened in Bullock: where at least one of the four opponents of summary reversal votes to deny certiorari rather than to grant plenary review (in Bullock, all four of the "dissenters" so voted). In a typical error correction case, one could imagine this happening if some of the dissenting Justices just didn't think the decision below was worth the Court's time one way or the other. Indeed, examples abound of 6-3, 7-2, or 8-1 summary reversals where at least one Justice objected on such terms without expressing a view as to either the merits or the form of the disposition. Perhaps it's just a fluke that there aren't similar examples of such a split in a 5-4 summary reversal; perhaps it's a reflection of deeper institutional realities, since it would be odd if five Justices thought an error so egregious as to warrant a summary reversal and the other four thought the error utterly unworthy of correction.

But whatever else Bullock was, it wasn't a typical error correction case--as made abundantly clear by the Ginsburg/Breyer opinion respecting the stay. And that's where things get interesting...

Let's start with the obvious: I think Rick Hasen is exactly right to suggest that such a move by the lefties is actually a "relative victory" for campaign finance reformers, given the extent to which "[t]aking the case would have been an opportunity for the majority of Supreme Court justices to make things worse [from the reformers' perspective], such as by suggesting that limits on direct contributions to candidates are unconstitutional." I'd only add the stare decisis point: separate from what the Justices didn't have a chance to decide, even what they did decide, i.e., that Citizens United applies to state campaign finance laws, will not have the same value qua stare decisis going forward, since "[a] summary disposition does not enjoy the full precedential value of a case argued on the merits and disposed of by a written opinion." That won't matter in the short term, but it certainly could matter if the day comes when there are no longer five strong votes to defend Citizens United... 

To be sure, I don't think any of this analysis is particulary earth-shattering. Whatever one thinks about the merits of Justice Breyer's move, it's a relatively obvious one, at least once it became clear that there were five unshakeable votes to slap down the Montana Supreme Court. But if it really was that clear, then the less obvious, more interesting question becomes why the conservative Justices acquiesced, since nothing would have stopped any four of the five Justices in the majority from opting for plenary review instead of a summary disposition.