There is a Supreme Court case coming up the political pipeline that could result in all of us saying goodbye to the Senator from California and Congressman from Texas, and welcoming the Senator from Hewlett-Packard and Congressman from Exxon-Mobil. This case, Citizens United v. Federal Election Committee, is being used as a springboard by special interests to eliminate all limits on campaign finance laws and unleash corporate money into our government.

The specific case began when a conservative political action group called Citizens United aired an anti-Hillary Clinton political T.V. spot that they referred to as a documentary, in order to avoid McCain-Feingold campaign communication limits. However it was found by a court to be a campaign ad, not a documentary, and thus could not be aired. The case was further appealed, was eventually heard by the Supreme Court, and the decision was expected to be handed down sometime last summer. This is where the case took a turn, as Chief Justice John Roberts delayed the decision and decided to have the case be reheard, but in the context of all campaign finance laws, not just the specific context of the case. That is, Chief Justice Roberts wants the court to rule on all campaign finance laws, not just on this relatively uncontroversial case. Why would Chief Justice Roberts want this to happen? Well, if you want the answer take a look at his political background. Before being on the Supreme Court, Roberts got his start working for a D.C. based law firm that specialized in protecting corporations’ rights as persons (see: my last post). When he became a judge, he continued that work and joined the Federalist Society, a right wing law group that works to promote the conservative agenda in the Judiciary. So, I think it’s fair to say that Chief Justice Robert’s motivation in having the case heard again is to strike down as many campaign finance laws as he can, fitting his beliefs that corporations have the right to unfettered access to our government. However, I fear an America where corporate landed gentry can dictate to our government with money, and frankly, so did the founding fathers. One of their largest fears was the development of a permanently wealthy social class that could influence government and run society unopposed. This is exactly what will develop out of unlimited corporate donations to our politicians. The truly frightening part of this is that, as the Court stands right now, it could easily go down that path. Looking at the liberal-conservative split, it could easily fall down the 5-4 split, with the Court ruling in favour of eliminating campaign finance restrictions (It is interesting to note that Justice Sotomayor has been raising concerns of corporate personhood on the court, an unprecedented step in a largely conservative court). If this worst case scenario happens, we are left with two different paths as a country. One of them is the Congressman from Exxon-Mobil, but the other is a public pushback against the court. Similar to the public sentiment after the much more serious Dred Scott decision that the court had gone too far, we can fight the forces of corporate power through a popular movement. I believe that almost all Americans can agree that we should have politicians that aren’t beholden to their largest contributor. We’ll just have to wait and see how the court rules.

Tags: Campaign Finance, Corporate Personhood, Supreme Court

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 15th, 2009 at 10:58 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.