“A corporation is an artificial being, invisible, intangible, and existing only in contemplation of law. Being the mere creature of law, it possesses only those properties which the charter of its creation confers upon it.”This is a categorically different view from the (wait for it!) elaborate legal fiction of corporations as entities that have worthy political ideas that require 1st amendment protections. That kind of corporate personhood is designed to fuck us.
"The bipartisan nature of these views is striking in these largely partisan times. The court’s ruling is opposed, respectively, by 76, 81 and 85 percent of Republicans, independents and Democrats; and by 73, 85 and 86 percent of conservatives, moderates and liberals. Majorities in all these groups, ranging from 58 to 73 percent, not only oppose the ruling but feel strongly about it.
Even among people who agree at least somewhat with the Tea Party movement, which advocates less government regulation, 73 percent oppose the high court’s rejection of this particular law. Among the subset who agree strongly with the Tea Party’s positions on the issues – 14 percent of all adults – fewer but still most, 56 percent, oppose the high court in this case."
The ruling is unpopular because people believe it will increase corporate influence in politics -- people tend not to care about legal fictions unless they result in a ruling that they believe will negatively impact their lives.For example, notice the lack of popular outcry about corporations being treated as "persons" under the Internal Revenue Code.
There's nothing unreasonable about believing the crux of one clause (freedom of speech) requires differentiation of individuals and corporations while the crux of another (the press) requires inclusion of both.Isn't there? What in the language "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press" would lead you to believe that there are entities that have press rights, but not speech rights? Particularly when you take into account that in 1789, the gloss of "the press" meaning "journalism" didn't yet predominate. Instead, it meant something like publishing. Corporate publishing didn't really exist at the time, if at all -- there were few if any general incorporation acts, and incorporation required a specific act of the legislature.
When I'm on the vinegar strokes of my Obama presidential fantasy, he enlarges the court to 11 (there's no constitutionally mandated number).
Anyway, most of what you wrote seems to be predicated on an originalist argument.No. There's nothing particularly originalist about taking the view that "speech" and "press" are just categories of expression, and as new categories of expression arise, they should likewise be accorded protection, which is what I argued. So don't tar me with that brush.
Neither he nor any other knowledgeable person actually believed or believes that the rules that judges in our system apply, particularly appellate judges and most particularly the Justices of the U.S. SUpreme Court, are given to them the way the rules of baseball are given to umpires. We must imagine that umpires, in addition to calling balls and strikes, made the rules of baseball and changed them at will. Suppose some umpires thought that pitchers were too powerful and so they decided that instead of three strikes and the batter is out it is six strikes and he's out, but other umpires were very protective of pitchers and though there were too many hits and therefore decreed that a batter would be allowed only one strike. . . .posted by Jaltcoh at 6:37 AM on March 3, 2010 [3 favorites]
Roberts may have made a tactical error. His confirmation did not turn on convincing Senators that a Supreme Court Justice is like a baseball umpire. In the spring of 2007, less than two years after his confirmation, he demonstrated by his judicial votes and opinions that he aspires to remake significant areas of constitutional law. The tension between what he said at his confirmation hearing and what he is doing as Justice is a blow to Roberts's reputation for candor and a further debasement of the already debased currency of the testimony of nominees at judicial confirmation hearings.
Laugh if you want, but freedom of the press is a specifically enumerated right over and above the right to free speech. As the US paper of record, New York times qualifies as "the press" don't you think?This is a deeply silly argument, so yes, I'm laughing. It's a historical and linguistic accident that a phrase we presently colloquially use to refer to corporate journalism collectively made its way into the First Amendment. Interpreting a law without being sensitive to intervening shifts in language use gives strange and arbitrary results. If people hadn't come to use the phrase "the press" to refer to the corporate journalism establishment, would we be forced to conclude that the NYT has no First Amendment rights? If, in the future, the word "speech" falls out of usage as a term generally encompassing all oral communications, and in 2100, "speech" is commonly used only to refer to oration to an audience, will we conclude that the First Amendment has consequently been narrowed? The answer has to be no.
Simple: All corporate speech is commercial speech by definition, because if it isn't motivated by commercial interest, the corporation is violating its legal obligations to its shareholders.Citizens United is a nonprofit.
Yes, but it has a charter that defines it's mission. To the extent its charter dictates its operational goals, it's speech rights are already legally constrained by its own charter.It's extremely common for a certificate of incorporation to provide that the corporation can engage in any lawful activity. I have no idea what Citizens United is authorized to do, by its charter, but we have no reason to think it was exceeding the scope of its permitted activities.
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I cannot get over the irony of watching the activism and disregard for past precedent of these darlings (Alito, Thomas, Roberts, Scalia) of the movement that claims to hate activist judges.
posted by bearwife at 5:39 PM on March 2, 2010 [5 favorites]