Can We Get Delaware To Sign On?
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?
Tags: Citizens United, SCOTUS
This sword cuts both ways. If you are a legislator who votes for the Corporatists you may just find that things are unraveling back in the hustings. If you can actually find the courage to vote against the Corporatists they will fund your opponent in the next Primary or the General Election. They give with one hand and take back with the other. It is an axe hanging over the heads of most elected officials and I suspect they would be glad to support a Constitutional Amendment. Even some of the GOP caucus might like to sign on after what has happened this cycle. If it passed we might see the rebirth of moderates in the Republican Party. We never will as long as the Koch Brothers are orchestrating their agenda.
We may have just found the new grassroots cause. It has the advantage of appealing to both left and right.
No. Citizen’s United is the branch. We need to get the root.
Has anyone asked Beau Biden or his reps about this? If not, I’ll send off a request for a response today….
I haven’t cass, go for it.
I don’t understand your comment hereagain?? Could you elaborate?
There are two legal bases for Citizen’s United. One is the establishment of corporations as people; the other is the equivalence of political donations to free speech. Overturning Citizen’s United, even by Constitutional Amendment, requires that we write legislation that reverses one of these things. Which one is here proposed?
Public financing of campaigns would make the matter moot. Banning PAC’s & soft money would, too. But what is the suggested remedy here? I doubt we’re looking at any serious attempt to rewrite the law to eliminate the personhood of corporations, so the thrust of it must be against the free-speech aspect.
I’d have to see some details before sending THAT to oversee the country my kids will inherit.
Best approach, imo, is another test case that the SCOTUS uses to limit Citizen’s United.
There is no quick solution, by all means launch an amendment effort but it will take years.Citizens United is a disaster that will keep on giving for years if not decades.
Normally, I think amending the Constitution is a last resort for when no legislative fix will do. This may qualify. Consider: We have a Constitutional mandate that the President must be born American. The original intent and continued practice have been to prevent a foreign potentate from taking over government by, of, and for the people. With the advent of the global economy, and in light of the Citizen’s United ruling, it becomes entirely possible for a foreign (maybe multinational) coroporation to buy as many elections as it takes to effectively seize control. It seems crazy that we have people screaming about birth certificates, but that we might ignore the fact that we have no idea who is paying for our campaings for public office.
We lost. The class war is over. When the presidential election was stolen in 2000, America’s owners knew once and for all that there was nobody willing to fight. We now face a convergence of spying technology, mass control, and loss of civil liberties that make resistance futile. A majority strong enough to pass a constitutional amendment will never be allowed to be “elected.”
Now back to discussing if Xtine is a witch or not…
You know, this is such a non-issue and here’s why. Does anybody truly believe that Fortune 500 companies, which presumably will have large democratic and republican numbers of shareholders will contenance the corporation spending money on candidates they oppose? I think most corporations will be very reluctant to spend money on ads and other political advocacy.
However, unions and trade groups make out like bandits under the ruling. They benefit much more than “corporations” do from this decision. Ironically, the decision probably helps democrats more than republicans even as democrats have their usual knee-jerk reaction to anything that infringes on the government’s right to regulate. Ultimately, this decision will have limited practical effects for most corporations, but unshackles unions and other special interest groups even more.
As to foreigners, last time I checked, the First Amendment only protects citizens, and so foreign companies and individuals can still be regulated like heck.
Publius, that’s wrong on several fronts, but here are two that stand out: Fortune 500 companies are likely already doing it, except since Citizen’s United, we, and the shareholders can’t tell for whom. Next, the constitution protects ‘people’. We have somehow inaccurately described corporations as persons, and as such extended them many rights. However, no one has questioned the citizenship of corporations.
Do you truly believe that there is much difference in the way Democrats and Republicans look after their corporate $ponsors?
I think it makes a difference if it’s out there for all to see. Labor unions are usually very up front about who they sponsor. They have an agenda, and it’s clear. Major corporations can be, but only sometimes. Look what happened recently to Target, when it was found out who they donated to.
Since the Citizen’s United ruling, we have have groups with names like Americans for a Better Tomorrow funded by who knows who.
Delaware has had a Campaign Finance Reform piece of legislation for years, not one legislator would support it. These legislators want to take corporate money, all the easier to hide it.
Actually, Delaware’s campaign finance law is pretty decent, as state laws go. It has been gutted by the Supreme Court’s recent decisions.
Publius wrote:
Sorry, but the First Amendment takes no distinctions concerning citizenship or even persons; it simply says that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Constitutional amendments to repeal specific things have been very rare; the Fourteenth Amendment was intended, in part, to overturn Dred Scott, and the Twenty-First overturned the Eighteenth.
But I’ve yet to see a problem so serious that restriction on speech was a solution which wasn’t worse than the problem.