Cite as: 536 U. S. 765 (2002)
Ginsburg, J., dissenting
jects of interest to the voters. See App. 97-103; Brief for Minnesota State Bar Association as Amicus Curiae 22-23 (e. g., the criteria for deciding whether to depart from sentencing guidelines, the remedies for racial and gender bias, and the balance between "free speech rights [and] the need to control [hate crimes]" (internal quotation marks omitted)). Further, they may discuss, criticize, or defend past decisions of interest to voters. What candidates may not do—simply or with sophistication—is remove themselves from the constraints characteristic of the judicial office and declare how they would decide an issue, without regard to the particular context in which it is presented, sans briefs, oral argument, and, as to an appellate bench, the benefit of one's colleagues' analyses. Properly construed, the Announce Clause prohibits only a discrete subcategory of the statements the Court's misinterpretation encompasses.
The Court's characterization of the Announce Clause as "election-nullifying," ante, at 782, "plac[ing] most subjects of interest to the voters off limits," ante, at 787, is further belied by the facts of this case. In his 1996 bid for office, petitioner Gregory Wersal distributed literature sharply criticizing three Minnesota Supreme Court decisions. Of the court's holding in the first case—that certain unrecorded confessions must be suppressed—Wersal asked, "Should we conclude that because the Supreme Court does not trust police, it allows confessed criminals to go free?" App. 37. Of the second case, invalidating a state welfare law, Wersal stated: "The Court should have deferred to the Legislature. It's the Legislature which should set our spending policies." Ibid. And of the third case, a decision involving abortion rights, Wersal charged that the court's holding was "directly contrary to the opinion of the U. S. Supreme Court," "un-precedented," and a "pro-abortion stance." Id., at 38.
When a complaint was filed against Wersal on the basis of those statements, id., at 12-15, the Lawyers Professional Responsibility Board concluded that no discipline was war-
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