“The 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. Michigan 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…The Court’s ruling threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions across the Nation. The path it has taken to reach its outcome will, I fear, do damage to this institution.“
Well, it was a nice republic while it lasted. In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court finally hands down its Citzens United verdict, and it is ugly. [Full Text] Basically, the distinction between corporations and individuals has been erased, and, by the already dubious proposition that money is speech, unlimited corporate expenditures in campaigns is now just good, old-fashioned government. Welcome to the new Lochner era, y’all.
By the way, this is a much, much bigger deal than Scott Brown or the effing Edwards baby. Not that you’d know that from watching the news right now.
Update: More reactions:
Fred Wertheimer, Democracy 21: “Today’s Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United case is a disaster for the American people and a dark day for the Supreme Court…With a stroke of the pen, five Justices wiped out a century of American history devoted to preventing corporate corruption of our democracy.“
Bob Edgar, Common Cause: “The Roberts Court today made a bad situation worse. This decision allows Wall Street to tap its vast corporate profits to drown out the voice of the public in our democracy. The path from here is clear: Congress must free itself from Wall Street’s grip so Main Street can finally get a fair shake.“
Robert Weissman, Public Citizen: “Shed a tear for our democracy…Money from Exxon, Goldman Sachs, Pfizer and the rest of the Fortune 500 is already corroding the policy making process in Washington, state capitals and city halls. Today, the Supreme Court tells these corporate giants that they have a constitutional right to trample our democracy.“
Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI): “[T]his decision was a terrible mistake. Presented with a relatively narrow legal issue, the Supreme Court chose to roll back laws that have limited the role of corporate money in federal elections since Teddy Roosevelt was president. Ignoring important principles of judicial restraint and respect for precedent, the Court has given corporate money a breathtaking new role in federal campaigns. Just six years ago, the Court said that the prohibition on corporations and unions dipping into their treasuries to influence campaigns was ‘firmly embedded in our law.’ Yet this Court has just upended that prohibition, and a century’s worth of campaign finance law designed to stem corruption in government. The American people will pay dearly for this decision when, more than ever, their voices are drowned out by corporate spending in our federal elections.“
President Obama: “With its ruling today, the Supreme Court has given a green light to a new stampede of special interest money in our politics. It is a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans. This ruling gives the special interests and their lobbyists even more power in Washington–while undermining the influence of average Americans who make small contributions to support their preferred candidates. That’s why I am instructing my Administration to get to work immediately with Congress on this issue. We are going to talk with bipartisan Congressional leaders to develop a forceful response to this decision. The public interest requires nothing less.“
Slate‘s Dahlia Lithwick: “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.“
A friend on facebook wrote:
So corporations get the same right to free speech as a human being … do they get any new responsibilities or accountability to go with it? I mean if I kill somebody, I’m going to jail for life or getting a lethal injection, so does this mean when a corporation kills somebody (with pollution, negligence, whatever) do we get to throw the Board of Directors, CEO &tc. on death row?
Can an individual, biological “person” register themselves as a corporation, thus avoiding any deprivation of liberty, read: jail?
Kevin, I know you’re expert in the campaign finance area, so I wanted to ask you: How much practical difference does this make in the short to medium term? Because as far as I can tell, it doesn’t make much. It just eliminates the need for workarounds like PACs / 527’s and all the other skullduggery that made McCain-Feingold a well-meaning failure. It’s not like things can get much more bought than they already are. Corporations already have a practical veto over everything as it is. The HRC process and the kid-glove treatment of the banks when it would have been poltical gold to have them drawn and quartered proves that. I’d rather this stuff be open and brazen if it’s going to happen.
That said, long term this looks a lot more disastrous, because it makes it difficult or impossible to do actual effective campaign finance reform in the future. Of course, considering the structural and political impossibility of that barring violent revolution, what is really lost there either? It’s demoralizing as hell, but it’s more of a confirmation of an existing state of affairs than a change. Or am I missing something really important here?
Sorry about the lag in response. I’ve been wrangling over at Salon, where Glenn Greenwald picked a horrible week to disappear up his own ass.
cdog and jeremiah, exactly. The idea that inanimate corporations are people, with all the inalienable rights attending, is ludicrous, and obviously very far from anything the Founders intended.
J.Dunn, I could be wrong, of course, but my sense is that this is going to be a very big deal, even in the short-to-medium term (although I would suspect players with bad intentions might keep a low profile this coming cycle, until the calls for a legislative/amendment response die down.) We’re taking a big step down the road to a Blade Runner-ish “corporations really do run everything” future.
The thing about PACs is they were still a pretty big workaround. Corporations had to run around to their shareholders and managerial employees and ask for up to $5000 from each, which is a lot harder to do than what they can do now — just unabashedly sign a check for 100 times that amount.
So, yeah, I think things are going to get much, *much* worse. And when even usually bright legal minds like Greenwald start calling unlimited corporate spending in elections a “free speech” issue (which is patently idiotic, and yet the culmination of a wrong turn the ACLU made a long time ago), it’s going to be almost impossible to fix.
Particularly when you consider that what corporations have been given here isn’t just a hammer. It’s a scalpel. If you’re some bought-and-paid-for, go-along-to-get-along pro-corporate stooge like Harold Ford or Evan Bayh, you’ll never see the fire hose coming your way. But if you’re an elected official or congressperson who wants to make any waves at all, corporations won’t even have to go national. They can flood the 1-2 media markets that are your bread and butter with a high volume of crap, and basically destroy you while the Fourth Estate putters on about something completely inane.
No, I believe this is serious trouble. I won’t call it Dred Scott, because “blacks are not citizens” is even more offensive and wrong-headed a central assumption than “corporations are people” or “money is speech” But it is another Lochner, in that, just as that case inexplicably extended 14th amendment protections to corporations, now we’re giving these inanimate amalgamations of capital first amendment rights. It’s totally absurd.