Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission


Feb 3: The impeachment drum starts to beat again

WASHINGTON DC -- "It’s not a drumbeat yet. But calls for impeachment of one or more Supreme Court justices are bubbling up in response to the Citizens United decision. Not so long ago, similar calls came from the right; but no matter the source, when such calls are made in political fury, they fly against the intent of our nation’s Founders. In American Chronicle, writer Gary Ater singles out Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel Alito, (in photo above) contending they testified under oath about the limited role of the Supreme Court, then stepped to vastly overreach that role in Citizens United. 'At least these two justices have broken the law by not fulfilling their own commitments that were made while being under oath,' Ater writes, urging a group of elected officials to 'pursue these justices,'" Peter Hardin, GavelGrab.

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Jan 29: Campaign finance ruling's likely impact overblown

LOS ANGELES -- "Media coverage and commentary have vastly overstated the likely impact on federal election campaigns of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, which ruled that corporations have the same right to free speech as individuals. It has also obscured the extent to which members of Congress from both parties had previously opened the door for corporate and union financing in federal campaigns. As associate director for policy of the Campaign Finance Institute from 2002-09, I wrote a number of studies showing the rise of corporate and union spending, via tax-exempt organizations, in federal elections. My research found that this spending supported media ads and grass-roots mail, phone and other communications that tore down or boosted candidates without using explicit phrases such as 'vote for' or 'vote against,'" Stephen R. Weissman, Los Angeles Times.

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Jan 28: Opinion: A Partisan Supreme Court

CLEVELAND -- "Last week's Supreme Court decision granting corporations the right to spend unrestricted amounts of money supporting or opposing candidates in federal elections is so strained in its reasoning and so removed from the realities of American life that it would be grotesquely comedic, were its implications not so dire. We're all familiar, of course, with the disenfranchisement of corporate America. It's common knowledge that the interests of big business are routinely ignored at every level of society, and that the deprivation of rights suffered by those unfortunates who populate its executive suites is a continuing affront to the national conscience. That, at least, was the suggestion of the strident tone taken by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. 'If the First Amendment has any force,' he wrote, 'it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens or associations of citizens for simply engaging in political speech.' You would think that the federal prisons were overflowing with corporate martyrs to freedom of expression. This is reasoning ludicrous on its face and radical in its dismissal of judicial decisions stretching back to Theodore Roosevelt's presidency. The notion that corporate rights and individual rights -- particularly those recognized by the First Amendment -- are congruent is absurd. Do corporations have a right to freedom of religion, or just to those liberties that advance commercial interests,?" Plain Dealer guest columnist Tim Rutten, Cleveland Plain Dealer.

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Jan 26: Husted urges campaign finance “transparency” in wake of U.S. Supreme Court ruling

DAYTON -- "In the wake of last week’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling prohibiting a ban on spending by corporations and unions in candidate elections, state Sen. Jon Husted, R-Kettering, has proposed safeguards to “ensure transparency in campaign finance and advertising.” Husted, who is running for secretary of state, outlined the proposal on Monday, Jan. 25, in a letter to Senate President Bill Harris, R-Ashland, and House Speaker Armond Budish, D-Beachwood. Copies were sent to Gov. Ted Strickland and Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner," William Hershey, Dayton Daily News.

Husted calls for greater disclosure in wake of court ruling
Mark Niquette, The Columbus Dispatch.

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Jan 26: Citizens United: A long-term perspective

COLUMBUS -- "A quarter-century from now, when we celebrate the bicentennial of de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, what will we think of Citizens United? The majority opinion was written to be revered, in the way that New York Times v. Sullivan or The Pentagon Papers Case has been. But perhaps, instead, it may be seen as a stain on the fabric of democracy, one sending the country into another era of sullied politics like the one before the Progressive Era took hold. The 90-page dissent is certainly written with this sort of prognosis in mind.... If a quarter-century from now, Congress remains dysfunctional, Citizens United will hardly have been the only cause. People will point to the filibuster, gerrymandering, and other factors that preceded Citizens United. And the bicentennial of de Toqueville’s book will not be a happy occasion. Let us hope that that is not the situation in which we find ourselves. Let us hope, instead, that we look back upon Citizens United as a spur which helped motivated Congress to engage in institutional self-improvement, which started a process that reduced the nation’s democracy deficit," Edward B. Foley, Election Law @ Moritz.

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Jan 26: Editorial: Supreme Court ruling on corporations and free speech opens big checkbooks to politicians

CLEVELAND -- "A sharply divided U.S. Supreme Court has essentially gutted the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. Yet in the course of excising parts of that act that, frankly, seemed designed more to make life easier for incumbent politicians, the court also reversed or weakened some of its own past decisions and a string of federal laws dating back to 1907 on corporate political contributions. Although the majority led by Justice Anthony Kennedy makes important First Amendment arguments to support its ruling, the decision certainly smacks of the 'judicial activism' that both parties claim to oppose -- when it goes against their interests. Even the plaintiffs here -- Citizens United, a conservative nonprofit group that ran afoul of the Federal Election Commission and McCain-Feingold when it sought to distribute an anti-Hillary Clinton documentary during the 2008 primaries -- had suggested a series of lesser remedies than what the court eventually provided," Cleveland Plain Dealer.

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Jan 26: Letter to the editor: Supreme Court gave Big Business power

COLUMBUS -- "What was the Supreme Court thinking ('Campaign cash law is relaxed,' McClatchy Newspapers, Friday Dispatch)? Look what it has done. With one decision, it has made the two-party political system obsolete. No longer will political platforms, parties, issues and constituents be the basis for decisions. Legislators will be elected for what Big Business will pay them to do. Votes will now be held with the determining factor not being what is best for the country, but what is best for Exxon, AEP, DuPont, Chase; whoever has the money has the voting clout. How "our" representatives and senators vote will be determined by cost accounting: If the bill will help 200 milllion people, but will cost Exxon $10 billion, and spending $5 billion in campaign contributions will save it $10 billion, Exxon will load up its biggest supporters' coffers, run ads and generally use its fiscal heft to support only those on its bandwagon, and squash those who would vote against it," The Columbus Dispatch.

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Jan 25: Stunning show of judicial activism

IRVINE, CALIFORNIA -- "The Supreme Court's 5-4 decision holding that corporations and unions can spend unlimited amounts of money in election campaigns is a stunning example of judicial activism by its five most conservative justices. In striking down a federal statute and explicitly overturning prior decisions, the court has changed the nature of elections in the United States. At the same time, the conservative justices have demonstrated that decades of conservative criticism of judicial activism was nonsense. Conservative justices are happy to be activists when it serves their ideological agenda," Erwin Chemerinsky, Akron Beacon Journal.

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Jan 25: McCain says campaign finance reform is dead

WASHINGTON DC -- "Sen. John McCain says the movement he led to reform how political campaigns are financed is dead. McCain says the Supreme Court has spoken on the constitutionality of political contributions by corporations. The Arizona Republican had sought to regulate them with a landmark campaign finance law he wrote with Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis. Last week the Supreme Court ruled that corporations may spend as freely as they like to support or oppose candidates for president and Congress," Associated Press.

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Jan 25: Editorial: Corporations didn’t need more rights

WASHINGTON DC -- "The court has ruled that corporations may use unlimited amounts of their own money on federal elections. That overturns a 63-year-old law federal. Ohio has a similar law. And the corporations (and presumably unions) are no longer banned from funding 'issue-oriented' ads out of their general fund in the two months before an election, as they were under McCain-Feingold. However, the corporations may still not give money directly to candidates. (The court was silent on that.) And the part of McCain-Feingold that banned unlimited contributions to national parties remains in force," Dayton Daily News.

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Jan 23: CU: NY Times, JAS Release Discuss Impact on Courts

CLEVELAND -- "The impact on state courts has come into sharper focus as a key result of this week’s Citizens United ruling. A very interesting story in today’s New York Times examines the effect of Citizens United on state laws regulating campaign spending by corporation treasuries. It concludes with a look at state judicial elections, quoting election law expert Rick Hasen and citing fund-raising data from Justice at Stake. And a news release issued Friday by Justice at Stake focuses on state courts. In the release, titled 'Citizens United Called Grave Threat for America’s Courts,' Bert Brandenburg, executive director of Justice at Stake, said:

'Citizens United has raised the threat facing elected courts to an unprecedented level. But it hasn’t ruled out meaningful campaign reforms to protect our courts. Indeed, it has made common-sense election reforms more urgent than ever.'," Charlie Hall, GavelGrab.com.

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Jan 22: Expect an 'onslaught' of Ohio political ads this fall, thanks to Supreme Court on corporations and free speech

WASHINGTON DC -- "That's Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner's advice for Americans this fall, when they could get caught in an onslaught of TV, radio and Internet political commercials, the velocity and volume of which we've never seen. The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday opened the gates for a new level of discourse, ruling 5-4 that corporations have a constitutional right to political communication. That means they can use shareholder money, and labor unions can use membership money, to run ads, show critical movies, mock or praise politicians, and urge voters to support or oppose candidates for election. They'll be able to spend as much as they wish," Sabrina Eaton and Reginald Fields, Cleveland Plain Dealer.

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Jan 22: Ruling could render Ohio's campaign-spending law toothless

COLUMBUS -- "Ohio's ban on corporate contributions could be unenforceable, some experts say, after yesterday's U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing corporate spending for political campaigns. Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner said she expects the legislature will consider modifying state law to bring it into compliance with the court's ruling -- and that voters can expect more 30-second television campaign commercials. 'So many people are very tired of the negative, hyperbolic ads that they see on TV. They dread when campaign season comes," Brunner said. "All I can say to them is: Brace yourselves. There's more,'" Mark Niquette, The Columbus Dispatch.

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Jan 21: High Court rolls back campaign spending limits

WASHINGTON DC -- "The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday struck down key provisions of some of the central laws governing how the nation's political campaigns are financed just ahead of the pivotal 2010 midterm congressional primaries and election season. By a 5-4 vote, the court ruled that corporations may spend freely to support or oppose candidates for president and Congress, overturning a 20-year-old ruling. It could take weeks to sort through the full ramifications of the landmark ruling, but its ripple effects could endanger federal limits on corporate and union contributions to candidates, as well as other measures that restrict how political ads are regulated. The ruling could unleash a flow of new corporate cash into the political realm," Deborah Tedford, Liz Halloran, National Public Radio.

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Jan 21: Supreme Court ends campaign-spending limits for corporations, unions
Ruling might have major effect on this fall's elections

WASHINGTON DC -- "The Supreme Court threw out a 63-year-old law designed to restrain the influence of big business and unions on elections today, ruling that corporations may spend as freely as they like to support or oppose candidates for president and Congress. The decision could drastically alter who gives and gets hundreds of millions of dollars in this year's crucial midterm elections. By a 5-4 vote, the court overturned two of its own decisions as well as the decades-old law that said companies and labor unions can be prohibited from using money from their general treasuries to produce and run their own campaign ads. The decision threatens similar limits imposed by 24 states. It leaves in place a prohibition on direct contributions to candidates from corporations and unions," Mark Sherman, Associated Press.

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