I noted with interest the announcement that the Supreme Court had, for the first time, set up a special web site for the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act Cases (BCRA) presently pending before the Court. This will permit the public to see the briefs and the filings, and not incidentally provide a place for the Court to provide even-handed and quick access to new filings, orders, and eventually the Court's ruling.
I clicked on one filing (another stealth PDF file) and found the most amazing statement in the filing in case No. 02-1740, entitled Adams, Victoria J., et al. v. FEC, et al. by lawyers with Hale and Dorr and with Boston's National Voting Rights Institute:
QUESTION PRESENTED
Whether the District Court erred in ruling that a challenge to the increased “hard money” contribution limits found in sections 304, 307 and 319 of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA), Pub. L. No. 107-155, 116 Stat. 81, 97-100, 102-03, and 109-112 (codified as amended at 2 U.S.C. §§ 441a and 441a-1) is nonjusticiable due to lack of cognizable injury, even though the increases will confer preponderant electoral power on wealthy donors and will effectively exclude candidates and voters without access to networks of large donors from electoral participation, in violation of the equal protection guarantee incorporated by the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
I had never heard of the doctrine of incorporation of 14th Amendment guarantees as against the Federal government by the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment. You learn something new every day.
Update -- My grandmother points out the case of Bolling v. Sharpe, which was the companion case to Brown v. Board of Education and which found that the practice of school segregation in D.C. was a violation of the due process clause of the 5th Amendment. That is true, but Bolling did not engage in any incorporation gymnastics to get to that result. There was not really very much reasoning in Bolling, other than to find that equal protection must somehow be included in the 5th's due process clause.
11:40:07 PM 
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