Coming Soon, Courtesy Of Your SUPREME COURT -- True Government BY "BUSINESS" !
James Fenimore
Antonin "My Son's A Priest" Scalia, and Chief Justice John "Civil
Rights Seizure" Roberts will soon render a decision that will give
U.S. corporations the absolute "right" to contribute UNLIMITED AMOUNTS
OF MONEY to political parties!
Spelled R-E-P-U-B-L-I-C-A-N !
You ready for this?
Oh, that's right.
We forgot.
You don't give a shit.
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"A Test Case for Roberts"
By E.J. Dionne Jr.
Monday, September 7, 2009
PRESIDENT OBAMA'S HEALTH-CARE SPEECH on Wednesday will be only the
second most consequential political moment of the week.
Judged by the standard of an event's potential long-term impact on our
public life, the most important will be the argument before the
Supreme Court (on the same day, as it happens) about a case that, if
decided wrongly, could surrender control of our democracy to corporate
interests.
This sounds melodramatic. It's not. The court is considering
eviscerating laws that have been on the books since 1907 and 1947 --
in two separate cases -- banning direct contributions and spending by
corporations in federal election campaigns. Doing so would obliterate
precedents that go back two and three decades.
The full impact of what the court could do in Citizens United v.
Federal Election Commission has only begun to receive the attention it
deserves. Even the word "radical" does not capture the extent to which
the justices could turn our political system upside down. Will it use
a case originally brought on a narrow issue to bring our politics back
to the corruption of the Gilded Age?
Citizens United, a conservative group, brought suit arguing that it
should be exempt from the restrictions of the 2002 McCain-Feingold
campaign finance law for a movie it made that was sharply critical of
Hillary Clinton. The organization said it should not have to disclose
who financed the film.
Instead of deciding the case before it, the court engaged in a
remarkable act of overreach. On June 29, it postponed a decision and
called for new briefs and a highly unusual new hearing, which is
Wednesday's big event. The court chose to consider an issue only
tangentially raised by the case. It threatens to overrule a 1990
decision that upheld the long-standing ban on corporate money in
campaigns.
I don't have the space to cite all the precedents, dating to the 1976
Buckley campaign finance ruling, that the court would set aside if it
were to throw out the prohibition on corporate money. Suffice it to
say that there is one member of the court who has spoken eloquently
about the dangers of ignoring precedents.
"I do think that it is a jolt to the legal system when you overrule a
precedent," he said. "Precedent plays an important role in promoting
stability and evenhandedness. It is not enough -- and the court has
emphasized this on several occasions -- it is not enough that you may
think the prior decision was wrongly decided. That really doesn't
answer the question, it just poses the question."
This careful jurist continued: "And you do look at these other
factors, like settled expectations, like the legitimacy of the court,
like whether a particular precedent is workable or not, whether a
precedent has been eroded by subsequent developments." He paraphrased
Alexander Hamilton as saying in Federalist 78, "To avoid an arbitrary
discretion in the judges, they need to be bound down by rules and
precedents."
Chief Justice John Roberts, the likely swing vote in this case, was
exactly right when he said these things during his 2005 confirmation
hearings. If he uses his own standards, it is impossible to see how he
can justify the use of "arbitrary discretion" to discard a well-
established system whose construction began with the Tillman Act of
1907.
Were the courts that set the earlier precedents "legitimate"? This ban
was upheld over many years by justices of various philosophical
leanings. We are not talking about overturning a single decision by a
bunch of activists in robes seizing a temporary court majority.
Are the precedents "workable"? The answer is clearly yes, which is why
there is absolutely no popular demand to let corporate cash loose into
our politics. Our system would be less "workable" if the court
abruptly changed the law.
Has the precedent been "eroded"? Absolutely not. In case after case,
no matter where particular court majorities stood on particular
campaign finance provisions, the ban on corporate contributions was
taken for granted. As the court stated just six years ago, Congress's
power to prohibit direct corporate and union contributions "has been
firmly embedded in our law." That's what you call "settled
expectations."
This case is the clearest test that Roberts has faced so far as to
whether he meant what he said to Congress in 2005. I truly hope he
passes it. If he doesn't, he will unleash havoc in our political
system and greatly undermine the legitimacy of the court he leads.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/06/AR2009090601188.html
Michael Coburn
From the lack of attention this is engendering in the corporate
controlled media it is clear that they expect a favorable ruling.
--
"Those are my opinions and you can't have em" -- Bart Simpson
Suppurating Tool
"Campaign Case Touches on Justices' Stance on Earlier Rulings"
By Robert Barnes
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
THE SUPREME COURT'S unusual hearing Wednesday on the role corporations
can play in influencing elections carries the potential not only for
rewriting the nation's campaign finance laws but also for testing the
willingness of the court led by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. to
defy the decisions of Congress and to set aside its own precedents.
The court will consider whether the "proper disposition" of a case --
pitting a conservative group's scorching campaign film about Hillary
Rodham Clinton against federal campaign finance laws -- requires
overturning two decisions that said government has an interest in
restricting the political activities and speech of corporations.
That raises ageless questions about the role of stare decisis -- the
court's custom of standing by its previous decisions. But it also
raises new ones about the boldness of a court that has moved to the
right with the addition of Roberts and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.
"Everyone knows this is a case about the chief and Justice Alito,"
said Richard J. Lazarus, co-director of the Supreme Court Institute at
the Georgetown University Law Center. "And the real question here is
whether the chief is ready to pull the trigger" on declaring the
restrictions unconstitutional.
Roberts's instincts have been to move incrementally, Lazarus noted.
But such a narrow and consistent chipping-away approach -- Roberts and
Alito have voted for every challenge to campaign finance laws since
joining the court -- may simply be a way to make more-sweeping
decisions appear inevitable.
"I don't think people should underestimate the chief justice's ability
to look down the road," said Washington attorney David C. Frederick,
who frequently argues before the court. "I think he's got a larger
constitutional vision. He's relatively young and looking into the
future."
As the recent hearings on new Justice Sonia Sotomayor showed, pledging
allegiance to stare decisis is a staple of the modern confirmation
process for a Supreme Court nominee. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the
ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he decided
to vote against the judge from New York because he did not think she
could resist the "siren song" of judicial activism.
To that end, those who favor strong government controls on campaign
finance, such as Democracy 21's Fred Wertheimer, say Roberts should
stand by his own words about how careful the court should be in
overturning precedent.
"It is not enough that you may think the prior decision was wrongly
decided," Roberts said at his confirmation hearing. "That really
doesn't answer the question; it just poses the question."
Instead, he said, justices must "look at these other factors, like
settled expectations, like the legitimacy of the court, like whether a
particular precedent is workable or not, whether a precedent has been
eroded by subsequent developments."
There are two precedents at stake in Wednesday's rehearing of Citizens
United v. Federal Election Commission. One is the court's 1990
decision in Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, in which it upheld
a state law that said corporations could be barred from spending their
profits to urge a candidate's election or defeat.
The second is part of the 2003 decision upholding Congress's
Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, commonly known as the McCain-Feingold
campaign finance law. The court ruled 5 to 4 that Congress may curtail
corporate spending on advertising that mentions a candidate shortly
before an election, even if it does not explicitly support or oppose
that person.
Three current justices -- Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy and
Clarence Thomas -- have said Austin should be overturned, and all
three said in McConnell v. FEC that McCain-Feingold violates the
Constitution's guarantee of free speech.
Those who favor the restrictions said a recognition that government
may treat corporations and individuals differently when it comes to
political spending dates back more than 100 years.
"Overruling Austin or McConnell in this case would be unwarranted and
unseemly," former solicitor general Seth P. Waxman told the court on
behalf of McCain and other congressional sponsors. "Stare decisis
requires respect for precedents absent a special justification for
overruling them. No such justification exists."
But for all the attention to stare decisis, the court regularly
rejects precedents, in ways urged by both conservatives and liberals.
The court ruled in 1986 in Bowers v. Hardwick that the Constitution
contains no protection for gay rights. Justices overturned the
decision 17 years later, with Kennedy writing: "Bowers was not correct
when it was decided, and it is not correct today."
The Roberts court has stepped to the line of declaring a major piece
of federal legislation unconstitutional, but backed down. Just three
months ago, the court raised questions about Congress's
reauthorization of part of the Voting Rights Act, but concluded that
"normally, the court will not decide a constitutional question if
there is some other ground upon which to dispose of the case."
But Steven R. Shapiro of the American Civil Liberties Union said the
court, the only body that can remedy a constitutional mistake, should
reexamine the free-speech questions raised by McCain-Feingold.
"Stare decisis does matter, and justices should think long and hard
before overturning decisions" of previous courts, Shapiro said. "But
you can't have a system that says if you make a mistake, it must stand
forever."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/07/AR2009090702040.html