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It was the height of activism to usurp the judgments of Congress and accompaniment legislatures about how best to prevent corruption of the political process. I accede with them. It was audacious to seize the opportunity to overrule precedents when the parties had not pressed this issue and the lower courts had not considered it. Many of those commenting on the decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission have focused on the power-grab part. It was unnecessary for the cloister to go so far when there were several less-radical grounds available.

First, the majority flung about dark warnings of "censorship" and "banned" speech as if advancement the existing rules would leave corporations and activity unions with no voice in the political process. Instead, they were required to use money raised by their political action committees from employees and members. Beneath federal election law afore the Supreme Cloister demolished it, corporations and activity unions were free to say whatever they capital about political candidates whenever they capital to say it. This is hardly banning speech. Untrue. They simply were not permitted to use absolute general treasury funds to do so.

That corporations enjoy free-speech protections does not mean they enjoy every protection afforded an actual person. The "conceit" of accumulated personhood, as Stevens called it, does not mandate absolute equivalence. For added than a century, Congress has barred corporations from authoritative direct contributions to political candidates, with no suggestion that it charge amusement accumulated persons the same as real ones; that prohibition stands, at atomic for now. Second, in the face of logic and history, the majority acted as if there could be no built-in distinction between a corporation and a human being. Is a corporation entitled to vote? To run for office?. Untrue. The Supreme Cloister has long held that corporations are considered "persons" beneath the Constitution and are therefore entitled to its protections.

The cloister dismissed this ruling as "a significant departure from age-old First Amendment principles." Again, untrue. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, a six-member majority came to the unsurprising conclusion that a accompaniment law prohibiting corporations from authoritative absolute independent expenditures from their general funds was constitutional. Third, misreading its precedents and cherry-picking quotations, the majority acted as if the chief case it overturned was an outlier. In that 1990 case, Austin v.

In a 1982 case, the cloister — in a unanimous opinion by then-Justice William Rehnquist — noted that Congress, in writing campaign finance law, was entitled to "considerable deference" in taking into annual "the particular legal and bread-and-butter attributes of corporations and activity organizations" and had made "a permissible assessment of the dangers airish by those entities to the balloter process." Four years later, even as it carved out an exception for nonprofit corporations, the cloister reaffirmed "the need to restrict the access of political war chests funneled through the accumulated form.".

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