Citizens United Case: What are the flaws in the argument given by the Supreme Court?

[BrentWil]

I always hate shallow discourse of major legal decisions. It becomes a discussion about the final result instead of the legal logic to come to the decision. If it is there side with the DADT decision or our side with something like the Citizens United Case, the focus is always on the results. While I don't necessarily agree with the decision given in this case, I propose that we raise the level of discourse on this board. Below is a link to the actual decision. Please provide where and how the court is wrong in their reasoning.

http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-205.pdf

[aquart]

1. Haven't read it. But didn't they equate money with free speech?

It ain't. Free speech is the antidote to money.

[BrentWil]

3. That is a shallow way to say what they are saying..

And money does allow speech and different groups to have a role in the public discourse.

[BzaDem]

11. As Cass Sunstein said

"There is no good reason to allow disparities in wealth to be translated into disparities in political power. A well-functioning democracy distinguishes between market processes of purchase and sale on the one hand and political processes of voting and reason-giving on the other."

[Nye Bevan]

13. You can't separate money from free speech.

Suppose Congress passed a law that states that nobody is allowed to spend money to criticize a member of Congress. You are still allowed to criticize a Congressman (by holding up a sign on a street corner, for example), but you are not allowed to spend money to criticize him or her. Do you think this law would violate the First Amendment?

[BzaDem]

14. Just because speech often requires money doesn't mean you can't regulate the money.

Whether a regulation of the money can withstand constitutional scrutiny depends on how far the regulation goes in restricting speech. In the case you mention, the law would obviously be invalid, since the law clearly has the effect of always restricting a significant amount of protected speech.

The law at issue in Citizens United is different. The law states that if corporations want to advocate to elect or defeat candidates, they have to do so out of a segregated fund (a PAC), that anyone in the corporation who wants to contribute to the PAC's favored causes can contribute to. They cannot do so with general treasury funds. In this case, the regulation of money does not necessarily suppress speech -- corporations still have opportunities to get their message out.

More broadly, allowing unlimited election spending isn't just a matter of "more speech": such unlimited spending significantly raises the prices of ads, which results in "less speech" from less wealthier candidates and causes who can no longer afford to get their message out at the new price. It is very different than the case of people with signs on the street, where the "price" of doing so does not increase when more people do it (and therefore does not have the effect of suppressing less wealthy speakers).

On top of all of that, free speech is not absolute. Even if you consider any regulation affecting any money going to any speech to be subject to strict scrutiny, laws that are narrowly tailored to further a compelling interest are still valid. Surely one such compelling interest is preventing the kind of corruption that occurs when lawmakers are beholden to money and fundraising, as opposed to the public interest. The idea that a corporation's thinly veiled threat of spending tens of millions to defeat a candidate if they don't vote against the law cannot seriously be considered "not corruption."

[leftstreet]

2. After 5 pm all the Constitutional Scholars on DU are in the Lounge n/t

[BrentWil]

4. Thats no fun. NT

[izzybeans]

5. Justice Stevens did just fine giving you your answer.

It's in the document you provided. Here is the first few paragraphs. There are more citations of established law in those few paragraphs then in the entire opinion of each member of the majority. They played semantic games with the law, which is what the Roberts side of the court has done since it became the majority. Thus Roberts et al are shallow, hollow shells of the propaganda automatons they were designed to be, which is to limit your liberty and empower massive bureaucratic machines ala corporations to blockade self-governance and sell it to you as freedom. They are members of Orwell's inner party.

JUSTICE STEVENS, with whom JUSTICE GINSBURG,
JUSTICE BREYER, and JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR join, concur­
ring in part and dissenting in part.
The real issue in this case concerns how, not if, the
appellant may finance its electioneering. Citizens United
is a wealthy nonprofit corporation that runs a political
action committee (PAC) with millions of dollars in assets.
Under the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002
(BCRA), it could have used those assets to televise and
promote Hillary: The Movie wherever and whenever it
wanted to. It also could have spent unrestricted sums to
broadcast Hillary at any time other than the 30 days
before the last primary election. Neither Citizens United’s
nor any other corporation’s speech has been “banned,”
ante, at 1. All that the parties dispute is whether Citizens
United had a right to use the funds in its general treasury
to pay for broadcasts during the 30-day period. The notion
that the First Amendment dictates an affirmative answer
to that question is, in my judgment, profoundly misguided.
Even more misguided is the notion that the Court must
rewrite the law relating to campaign expenditures by for-
profit corporations and unions to decide this case.
The basic premise underlying the Court’s ruling is its
iteration, and constant reiteration, of the proposition that
the First Amendment bars regulatory distinctions based
2 CITIZENS UNITED v. FEDERAL ELECTION COMM’N
Opinion of STEVENS, J.
on a speaker’s identity, including its “identity” as a corpo­
ration. While that glittering generality has rhetorical
appeal, it is not a correct statement of the law. Nor does it
tell us when a corporation may engage in electioneering
that some of its shareholders oppose. It does not even
resolve the specific question whether Citizens United may
be required to finance some of its messages with the
money in its PAC. The conceit that corporations must be
treated identically to natural persons in the political
sphere is not only inaccurate but also inadequate to justify
the Court’s disposition of this case.
In the context of election to public office, the distinction
between corporate and human speakers is significant.
Although they make enormous contributions to our soci­
ety, corporations are not actually members of it. They
cannot vote or run for office. Because they may be man­
aged 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 legiti­
mate 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 corpo­
rate spending in local and national races.
The majority’s approach to corporate electioneering
marks a dramatic break from our past. Congress has
placed special limitations on campaign spending by corpo­
rations ever since the passage of the Tillman Act in 1907,
ch. 420, 34 Stat. 864. We have unanimously concluded
that this “reflects a permissible assessment of the dangers
posed by those entities to the electoral process,” FEC v.
National Right to Work Comm., 459 U. S. 197, 209 (1982)
(NRWC), and have accepted the “legislative judgment that
the special characteristics of the corporate structure re­
quire particularly careful regulation,” id., at 209–210. The
3 Cite as: 558 U. S. ____ (2010)
Opinion of STEVENS, J.
Court today rejects a century of history when it treats the
distinction between corporate and individual campaign
spending as an invidious novelty born of Austin v. Michi-
gan Chamber of Commerce, 494 U. S. 652 (1990). Relying
largely on individual dissenting opinions, the majority
blazes through our precedents, overruling or disavowing a
body of case law including FEC v. Wisconsin Right to Life,
Inc., 551 U. S. 449 (2007) (WRTL), McConnell v. FEC, 540
U. S. 93 (2003), FEC v. Beaumont, 539 U. S. 146 (2003),
FEC v. Massachusetts Citizens for Life, Inc., 479 U. S. 238
(1986) (MCFL), NRWC, 459 U. S. 197, and California
Medical Assn. v. FEC, 453 U. S. 182 (1981).

[Unvanguard]

6. They have a simplistic analysis of the role free speech plays in public debates.

Effectively, the opinion rests on the presumption that more speech always enhances the values free speech protections are meant to protect, and hence suppression of the speech of powerful institutions is hostile to free speech. But this simply isn't correct. A lopsided distribution of resources produces a lopsided public debate, in which the speech of those with fewer resources is drowned out by those with more. Free speech requires at least some measure of equality for public debates to be meaningful means of advancing truth and justice.

[BzaDem]

10. In addition, TV ads are in a market. This means that additional spending by one party doesn't just

give them more speech at no expense to the other party. It actually raises the price of ads in that market, which can have the effect of preventing the other party from getting their message out (not just result in more ads for one party than the other).

You are correct that the majority's view is that more speech is always and everywhere a good thing. What will be hilarious is their likely upcoming ruling that the government can't provide MORE money to less well-funded candidates (to attempt to level the playing field). They will then turn the reasoning on its head, and say that providing MORE funding for the less well-funded candidate provides a disincentive for the more well-funded candidate to speak, and therefore violates the first amendment rights of the more well-funded candidate (!). They will probably accomplish this reversal in reasoning simply by not talking about it.

[scheming daemons]

7. Because the Bill of Rights was written about INDIVIDUAL citizens...

...nowhere in the constitution are corporations granted citizenship status.

Corporations are NOT people.

[aquart]

8. We should put one on trial for murder and see how that works out.

[blondeatlast]

9. Not a bad idea--quite seriously. Make corporations face criminal penalties

and charge the CEOs as at least accessories after the fact. The RW sets up cases designed to go to SCOTUS, why can't an enterprising gtoup of our guys do the same?

[mmonk]

12. I suggest you pm Landshark.