Cite as: 518 U. S. 668 (1996)
Opinion of the Court
special protections afforded to government employees is,
therefore, not persuasive.
B
1
The dissent's fears of excessive litigation, see post, at 697- 699, cannot justify a special exception to our unconstitutional conditions precedent to deprive independent government contractors of protection. Nor can its assertion that the allocation of government contracts on the basis of political bias is a "long and unbroken tradition of our people." Post, at 688. We do not believe that tradition legitimizes patronage contracting, regardless of whether one approaches the role of tradition in First Amendment adjudication from the perspective of Part I of the Rutan dissent, see post, at 687 (quoting Rutan v. Republican Party of Ill., 497 U. S. 62, 95 (1990) (Scalia, J., dissenting)) (a practice that " 'bears the endorsement of a long tradition of open, widespread, and unchallenged use that dates back to the beginning of the Republic' " is presumed constitutional) (emphasis added), or from that of Justice Holmes, compare post, at 690 (quoting Holmes' discussion of traditional usage of legal terminology in a tax case) with Abrams v. United States, 250 U. S. 616, 630 (1919) (Holmes, J., dissenting) (rejecting both the self-interested "logi[c]" and the long history of the suppression of free speech, including the Sedition Act of 1798 and "the common law as to seditious libel," in favor of the true "theory of our Constitution," which values free speech as essential to, not subject to the vicissitudes of, our political system).
The examples to which the dissent cites, post, at 688-690, are not, in our view, " 'the stuff out of which the Court's principles are to be formed,' " post, at 687 (quoting Rutan, supra, at 96 (Scalia, J., dissenting)). Consider, for example, the practice of "courtroom patronage," whereby "[e]lected judges, who owe their nomination and election to the party, give the organization lucrative refereeships, trusteeships,
681
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