"When I began as a young lawyer in the 1960s, text was an interesting jumping-off point."

"It was sometimes even read from beginning to end. But it was rarely dispositive…. One of the great triumphs of Justice Scalia’s work on the Court over the years — with help from a number of the other justices — was to remind us that text does play an important role, and that we should be spending more time with the text."

Said NYU lawprof Burt Neuborne, talking about his new book, "Madison's Music: On Reading the First Amendment." Alongside him was Justice Sonia Sotomayor, whom he thanked for "her human voice." Is that a compliment? Is this a compliment: "It’s a fun book for someone who's not immersed in the law"? That's what she said about his book.

I got to that NYU page via email that promotes NYU School of Law things to the school's graduates (which include me). I hesitated to link to it, however, because I'm ashamed of the inaccuracy of this sentence:

Turning to the justice’s question, Neuborne referred to an exchange between Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Stephen Breyer in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, which invalidated federal campaign contribution limits for individual donors on First Amendment grounds.

McCutcheon invalidated aggregate contributions. The base limits on contributions remain intact. The next sentence is awful too:

In Breyer’s dissent, he argued the ruling was a blow to democracy, while Roberts responded that the Court’s business was merely to enforce the First Amendment, and better democracy could be obtained through amending the Constitution.

Here's McCutcheon. From the Roberts' opinion:

The dissent [by Justice Breyer] faults this focus on “the individual’s right to engage in political speech,” saying that it fails to take into account “the public’s interest” in “collective speech.” This “collective” interest is said to promote “a government where laws reflect the very thoughts, views, ideas, and sentiments, the expression of which the First Amendment protects.”

But there are compelling reasons not to define the boundaries of the First Amendment by reference to such a generalized conception of the public good. First, the dissent’s “collective speech” reflected in laws is of course the will of the majority, and plainly can include laws that restrict free speech. The whole point of the First Amendment is to afford individuals protection against such infringements. The First Amendment does not protect the government, even when the government purports to act through legislation reflecting “collective speech.” Cf. United States v. Alvarez, 567 U. S. ___ (2012); Wooley v. Maynard, 430 U. S. 705 (1977) ; West Virginia Bd. of Ed. v. Barnette, 319 U. S. 624 (1943) .

Second, the degree to which speech is protected cannot turn on a legislative or judicial determination that particular speech is useful to the democratic process. The First Amendment does not contemplate such “ad hoc balancing of relative social costs and benefits.” United States v. Stevens, 559 U. S. 460, 470 (2010) ; see also United States v. Playboy Entertainment Group, Inc., 529 U. S. 803, 818 (2000) (“What the Constitution says is that” value judgments “are for the individual to make, not for the Government to decree, even with the mandate or approval of a majority”).

Third, our established First Amendment analysis already takes account of any “collective” interest that may justify restrictions on individual speech. Under that accepted analysis, such restrictions are measured against the asserted public interest (usually framed as an important or compelling governmental interest). As explained below, we do not doubt the compelling nature of the “collective” interest in preventing corruption in the electoral process. But we permit Congress to pursue that interest only so long as it does not unnecessarily infringe an individual’s right to freedom of speech; we do not truncate this tailoring test at the outset.