Legal Commentary

Brennan Center Call On Citizens United

By Big Tent Democrat

On the call:

Brennan Center Executive Director Michael Waldman, NYU Law Professor and Supreme Court Litigator Burt Neuborne, Brennan Center campaign finance expert Monica Youn, and Heather Gerken, Elections Law Professor at Yale Law School.

First up, Burt Neuborne. The importance of the Citzens United case is that it gives a green light to allow unfettered corporate money into our political system after a century of understanding that this is deleterious not only to our political system but also to our system of commerce. It's gonna change our democracy and make it vulnerable to massive infusions of money. More . . .

Citizens United will also have a deleterious effect on the Court itself. Stare decisis could well be dead as a result.

The other striking thing is the willingness of the Court to treat a corporation as an individual instead of a creation of law for commerce purposes.

Neuborne has hope that the future will belong to us because the Stevens opinion is superior to the Kennedy opinion.

Monica Youn - the Court treated the First Amendment and democracy as in conflict. the First Amendment is about freedom of speech not the freedom to spend as much money as possible.

Youn criticizes the the Kennedy opinion for saying that corporations are "stifled" in our political discourse by these restrictions.

Solutions? Public financing in the short term.

Professor Heather Gerken - Biggest concern - the Court said the Congress has almost no role to regulate. This is a big change, given that Congress had been given at least, theoretically, some level of discretion. Regulating "corruption" for example, is narrowed to express quid pro quos, as opposed to regulating to ADDRESS the potential of corruption.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on January 21, 2010 (boomark / email).