Justices to Review Campaign Finance Law Constraints

[Lasher]

Source: Washington Post

The Supreme Court announced yesterday that it will consider whether to uphold a ban on corporate spending in federal elections, a move that campaign finance experts said could have a dramatic effect on the 2010 and 2012 federal elections.

In a surprise move, the court said it would delay a decision on whether a conservative group's film criticizing then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton ran afoul of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance act.

Instead, the court scheduled a rare September hearing on whether the law itself raised constitutional questions and it said it would reexamine a 1990 decision that said restricting corporations from spending money from their general treasuries to support or oppose political candidates did not violate constitutional guarantees of free speech.

"This has the potential to be a blockbuster," said Michael E. Toner, a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission. He said the issues have implications for "the whole architecture of the federal campaign financing system."

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/29/AR2009062903997.html?hpid=topnews

[cascadiance]

1. We have GOT to get rid of corporate "person" free speech!

They want to make campaign financing worse than it is already? It already is bad enough as it is and needs a major overhaul.

This is why Obama MUST NOT compromise with his SCOTUS selections. He has a long way to go and needs to get justices on it that will eventually overturn that "court clerk activist" corporate personhood notion from the headnotes of that case in the 1800's.

[Vidar]

2. Real good. Gut one of the very few laws that actually does something right.

[cstanleytech]

3. Someone should try something along the same excuse the shrub and

many Republicans still use to allow torture and imprisonment for people in Gitmo.
In other words the corporations are "not" US citizens, thus the freedom of speech right in the constitution doesnt apply to them.

[bemildred]

4. Excellent point. Corporations are definitely not US citizens.

Hence they definitely do not have the rights of US citizens. They are creatures of the government, and the government can do with them whatever it likes.

[merh]

5. Corporations are not persons, they do not have the right to

free speech.

God help us, we need to put fair justices on SCOTUS and not let the conseratives/moderates have their way on this.

[Lasher]

6. That won't happen in my lifetime.

Sotomayor is a moderate. Obama didn't even try to seat a progressive.

[No Elephants]

8. You expect him to do everything at once? Oh wait. Nominating a rightie doesn't take any

less time or effort than nominating a leftie, yet Obama's only two nominees have been "moderates."

Oh, well, Then, it's a chess game. After these judges have decades to set precedents that should last far longer than they do...

Ok. I have no chess move with which to end that sentence.

[No Elephants]

7. The Virginia Board of Pharmacy case protected advertising as

free speech because, in that case, the Court was trying to protect consumers from being gouged by drug prices because the law did not permit pharmacies to advertise the prices. http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/vaboard.html

It was not much of a leap after that. However, that case also made clear that advertising was not entitled to the same level of protection as other speech and could therefore be more heavily regulated, including requiring that advertising be honest.

Leave it to the Roberts Court, though, to protect speech whose intention is to deceives people. That is what I expect from that Court.

What do you expect from a Court headed by Roberts, who said over and over in his confirmation hearings that he would respect precedent, stare decisis, etc., yet feels no compunction about overturning relatively recent precedents.

Heaven forgive me, but I hate this Court.