2010 is the first post-Citizens United election and we’re awash in untraceable corporate money. Can we get our democracy back?
Bipartisan Group of Former Attorneys General and Law Professors Calls on Congress to Examine Constitutional Amendment To Reverse Citizens United
As the Supreme Court returns today for its new term, a bipartisan group of law professors and prominent attorneys, including seven former state attorneys general, issued a letter criticizing the Court’s ruling in January in Citizens United v. FEC, which equated corporate spending in elections with free speech rights, and calling on Congress to consider a constitutional amendment to overturn the decision.
Free Speech for People and People For the American Way announced the release of the letter (PDF), which was signed by more than fifty leading law professors and attorneys, including former Massachusetts Attorneys General Frank Bellotti and Scott Harshbarger; former Mississippi Attorney General Michael Moore; former Arizona Attorney General Grant Woods; leading constitutional scholars; and numerous former federal and state prosecutors from across the country.
The diverse group of attorneys, scholars, and public servants call the Citizens United decision “a serious danger to effective self-government of, for and by the American people.” The signatories urge Congress to consider a constitutional amendment to address that danger, noting that “most of the seventeen amendments adopted since the original Bill of Rights have corrected what the American people understood were obstacles to the equal rights of all people to participate in self-government on equal terms.”
“As the mid-term elections near, it is becoming increasingly clear, according to widespread reports, that hundreds of millions of dollars and shadowy, anonymous front groups are dominating election spending and seeking to shape the outcome of not only the federal elections, but judicial and state elections as well,” said Scott Harshbarger, former Massachusetts Attorney General and former president of Common Cause.
As Frank Rich explained, we’re in the midst of a coup by billionaires. Could we get Delaware to sign on to this?