Well, here's one fallacy to start with.
I'm one of the last people to try to suggest that the Supreme Court is always right to say whatever it says. I have been suspicious of the Court since I was 16 years old. Starting when I was 26 years old I began intensely studying how the Supreme Court interprets many (not all) clauses in the Constitution. I found out that the Court has indeed made many wrong decisions, and has often interpreted certain clauses in ways far beyond what the clauses were intended to mean. But I don't think that Buckley or Citizens United are examples of the Court making an error, not in terms of interpreting the Constitution. And I don't think I implied that whatever the Court says is an accurate interpretation of the Constitution; I was asking a previous poster whether the Court has ever actually said that money is speech. Oh, well then I apologize for the misunderstanding. But to answer the original question: yes; in 2010, the Court's very controversial ruling in
Citizens United v. FEC determined that spending by corporations or unions for a political cause is a form of free speech & is therefore protected under the 1st Amendment. While there's a lot of nuance to this complicated issue, the decision can be summarized as follows:
Political spending is a form of protected speech under the 1st Amendment, & the gov't. may not keep corporations or unions from spending money to support or denounce individual candidates in elections. While corporations or unions may not give money directly to campaigns, they may seek to persuade the voting public through other means, incl. ads, especially where these ads weren't broadcast. So, Citizens United furthered the legal precedent that, in terms of political spending, corporations = people & money = speech.
How so? Because a big campaign contribution works effectively as a bribe? That's a pretty common accusation that gets made by people who support campaign finance reform: financially helping a candidate is the moral equivalent of bribery. It's a popular, and populist, theory. I don't buy into that theory, and I understand why the Court did not do so either. But your theory is what: that when a wealthy businessman like Shaun McCutcheon contributes millions of dollars to various politicians around the country, he is effectively trying to coerce those politicians into doing legislative things that the politicians who received the money did not want to do, and/or their voters do not want them to do? Mr. McCutcheon was trying to financially help many candidates to campaign -- to try to persuade voters to "vote for me (the candidate)." The people who spend the most money do not always win the elections, and I simply do not see how contributions make the contributors more important to the politicians than the voters.[/quote]
Well, I wouldn't amount to calling the problem legalized bribery, but ultimately, many feel that these decisions made it much easier for the richest Americans to dominate our elections by allowing the super-rich & corporations to effectively influence & manipulate elections.
And under the context of my statement that "
the voter is now less important than the man who provides money to the candidate." (
McCutcheon v. FEC), I ask you this: who are a legislator's constituents? According to most of us (& to the Oxford American Dictionary) it is "
members" of "
a body of voters who elect a representative to a legislative body." But the Court wasn't referring to voters, but to donors. According to the Court, McCutcheon is a constituent of every member of Congress, b/c he can afford to buy access & influence from all of them. Most of the voters in his AL congressional district can't. They exercise their influence over just 1 congressman & 2 Senators as most Americans do: by voting. So, under the jurisprudence of the current Court, my statement that "
the voter is less important than the man who provides money to the candidate" stands.
I disagree that adopting a constitutional amendment to say Congress and the states may regulate campaign financing is to adopt something that is already in the Constitution. It would be a first-time ever exception to the principle of Freedom of Speech. I am ready to adopt that. I also disagree that money is drowning out the votes of actual U.S. citizens; see above.[/quote]
Well, regardless of whether we agree or not that a constitutional amendment would actually reaffirm what's already in the Constitution, at least we can agree that a new amendment is necessary in order to firmly strike down Citizens United & make it clear in the Constitution that only human beings, not corporate entities or unions, have the right to vote & to contribute to campaigns
Yes. People should be appointed to the Supreme Court for reasons exactly like the reason why Herbert Hoover crossed party lines and appointed Benjamin Cardozo to the Supreme Court. The Court is supposed to be made up of the nine most highly
objective interpreters of law that can be found anywhere in the country, and I do not think it wise to choose someone because that person thinks
Citizens United was a disaster. That person is highly unlikely to be objective.
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Well, again, at least we can agree that judicial nominees ought to be qualified & recognize that the sole function of the courts is to interpret the Constitution
