Bond v. Floyd

Audience

When the Supreme Court speaks on the breadth of constitutional rights and the fostering of democracy through representative-constituent dialogue, the entire country is its broad audience. Bond v. Floyd is no different with respect to its general views on the subjects. The public was told to expect candor from their representatives because candor was necessary for representatives to communicate with and adequately represent constituents. However, the narrower, more legalistic portions of the opinion were arguably addressed to a narrower segment of the populace: those legislators and legislatures that would seek to make orthodoxy king and would root out dissent wherever it could be found. Federal and state legislators were encouraged to take notice that their prerogatives regarding when they could decline to seat members were to be limited and that they had no right to stifle dissent regarding policy through the exercise of their power to judge the qualifications of other members.