You should see what words I mouthed...

by: Jay Stevens

Thu Jan 28, 2010 at 09:53:29 AM MST

"Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests- including foreign corporations- to spend without limit in our elections," Obama said. "Well I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people, and that's why I'm urging Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to right this wrong."

Justice Alito was seen mouthing the words, "not true," during this passage. Reaction from the right is hilarious.

Sara Palin: "Obama was "embarrassing our Supreme Court. ... T]his will be the huge take-away moment." The Corner's [Bradley Smith called it "either blithering ignorance of the law, or demagoguery of the worst kind."

Politico's Randy Barnett:

In the history of the State of the Union has any President ever called out the Supreme Court by name, and egged on the Congress to jeer a Supreme Court decision, while the Justices were seated politely before him surrounded by hundreds Congressmen? To call upon the Congress to countermand (somehow) by statute a constitutional decision, indeed a decision applying the First Amendment? What can this possibly accomplish besides alienating Justice Kennedy who wrote the opinion being attacked. Contrary to what we heard during the last administration, the Court may certainly be the object of presidential criticism without posing any threat to its independence. But this was a truly shocking lack of decorum and disrespect towards the Supreme Court for which an apology is in order. A new tone indeed.

This is certainly somewhat different than previous outcry from conservatives about "judicial activism," eh? Especially when Citizens United was an actual example of judicial activism, where conservative SCOTUS justices saw fit to greatly expand the scope of a case brought before them to undo a century of precedent concerning the regulation of corporate money and politics. And as former SCOTUS justice, Sandra Day O'Connor, noted, Citizens United poses more of a threat to the reputation, independence, and efficacy of our judicial system than any paragraph in a speech ever could:

She added that last week's decision was likely to create "an increasing problem for maintaining an independent judiciary."

"In invalidating some of the existing checks on campaign spending," Justice O'Connor said, "the majority in Citizens United has signaled that the problem of campaign contributions in judicial elections might get considerably worse and quite soon."

But based on previous rulings by the SCOTUS' conservative majority - from Bush v Gore to rulings on voter ID laws to Citizens United - it appears that some justices think the law should align with corporatist Republican electoral strategy by discouraging voters from going to the polls and removing roadblocks on corporations to allow them to dictate policy.

Finally! Corporate America gets a voice in politics!

by: Jay Stevens

Fri Jan 22, 2010 at 14:12:26 PM MST

A lobbyist can now tell any elected official: if you vote wrong, my company, labor union or interest group will spend unlimited sums explicitly advertising against your re-election.

"We have got a million we can spend advertising for you or against you - whichever one you want,' " a lobbyist can tell lawmakers, said Lawrence M. Noble, a lawyer at Skadden Arps in Washington and former general counsel of the Federal Election Commission.

The majority opinion essentially found that corporations - with the rights of "legal personhood" - enjoyed extensive First Amendment rights, utterly oblivious to the to the fact that corporations, well, aren't people.

In his dissent (pdf), Justice Stevens questioned the wisdom of granting corporations such sweeping individual rights, noting that the majority, in ruling the case this way broke with a hundred years' of precedent.

In the context of election to public office, the distinction between corporate and human speakers is significant. Although they make enormous contributions to our society, corporations are not actually members of it. They cannot vote or run for office. Because they may be managed and controlled by nonresidents, their interests may conflict in fundamental respects with the interests of eligible voters. The financial resources, legal structure, and instrumental orientation of corporations raise legitimate concerns about their role in the electoral process. Our lawmakers have a compelling constitutional basis, if not also a democratic duty, to take measures designed to guard against the potentially deleterious effects of corporate spending in local and national races.

Dahlia Lithwick:

But you can plainly see the weariness in Stevens eyes and hear it in his voice today as he is forced to contend with a legal fiction that has come to life today, a sort of constitutional Frankenstein moment when corporate speech becomes even more compelling than the "voices of the real people" who will be drowned out. Even former Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist once warned that treating corporate spending as the First Amendment equivalent of individual free speech is "to confuse metaphor with reality." Today that metaphor won a very real victory at the Supreme Court. And as a consequence some very real corporations are feeling very, very good.

(Check out SCOTUSblog analysis by Lyle Dennison of the implications on corporate personhood Citizens United v. FEC has.)

The New York Times:

Congress and members of the public who care about fair elections and clean government need to mobilize right away, a cause President Obama has said he would join. Congress should repair the presidential public finance system and create another one for Congressional elections to help ordinary Americans contribute to campaigns. It should also enact a law requiring publicly traded corporations to get the approval of their shareholders before spending on political campaigns.

These would be important steps, but they would not be enough. The real solution lies in getting the court's ruling overturned. The four dissenters made an eloquent case for why the decision was wrong on the law and dangerous. With one more vote, they could rescue democracy.

That's right. The New York Times is claiming our democratic system is at stake with this ruling.

The paper is absolutely correct. Already corporations control our political systems; this ruling rolls back the meager protection we've had from mega-capital a hundred years. It's a raw piece of judicial activism, a blow against equality and economic egalitarianism, and will further erode whatever structures of meritocracy existent in the county, replacing it with a kind of plutocratic aristocracy, whose coats of arms will be company logos.

Oh, and the ruling will probably benefit Republicans in the 2010 midterms. But, as is too often the case with the SCOTUS' conservative majority, that's not a bug, that's a feature.

If you prick a corporation...

by: Jay Stevens

Tue Sep 22, 2009 at 18:37:16 PM MST

And everything there is to know about the amendments fits in one beautiful post - a work of art! - by Igor Volsky.

So...what now? How about a discussion of corporate personhood?

The SCOTUS is currently mulling a decision in Citizens United v FEC - a case that could have chilling repercussions on our democracy, if the court's conservatives have their way.

The story:

Last year, the court entertained arguments on whether the Federal Election Commission was wrong in blocking the distribution of a film critical of Hillary Clinton over a video-on-demand service. Citizens United, the nonprofit corporation that produced "Hillary: The Movie,'' calls the film a documentary; the election commission disagreed, deeming it the equivalent of an ad and a violation of the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law. And many free-speech advocates shuddered at an interpretation of federal law that allowed a movie by an advocacy group to be subject to campaign-finance restrictions.

But instead of deciding just that issue, the court called for further arguments on a broader one: the distinction between the political rights of corporations and those of actual people. Three conservative justices have long been gunning to overturn a 1990 Supreme Court decision that allowed the government to impose restraints on how corporations can spend money during campaigns.

The Globe in this editorial condemns that conservative impulse, saying "...he distinction between corporate speech and individual speech is clear enough, and the importance of limiting the undue influence of money in politics is significant enough, that the court, in all its wisdom, should leave well enough alone."

Heck, I'd go further. I find the idea of corporate personhood vile, and the legal means to allow moneyed interests to pool their capital to thwart the will of the electorate. It was devised to serve railroad interest in the 1880s, and it's been dogging us ever since, as anyone who's been following the healthcare debate well knows. In essence, giving corporations the constitutional rights of individuals sets those eternally living and deep-pocketed entities above us - which is a kind of madness, really, if you consider that corporations are not reasoning creatures, with neither human needs nor reasoned beliefs.

The New York Times, like the Globe, also opines against expanding corporate rights, and gives us a brief glimpse into the minds of those that might unleash corporate power against us:

In an exchange this month with Chief Justice Roberts, the solicitor general, Elena Kagan, argued against expanding that narrowly defined personhood. "Few of us are only our economic interests," she said. "We have beliefs. We have convictions." Corporations, "engage the political process in an entirely different way, and this is what makes them so much more damaging," she said.

Chief Justice Roberts disagreed: "A large corporation, just like an individual, has many diverse interests." Justice Antonin Scalia said most corporations are "indistinguishable from the individual who owns them."

Maybe these justices should get out more and meet, you know, some people.