How Are Liberals Attacking the Conservatives at SCOTUS?

[mugaliens]

Apparently, Liberals are attacking the conservatives at SCOTUS.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20110307/pl_politico/50757" .

Personally, I feel any attack against SCOTUS is sorely misplaced, for several reasons, not the least of which is that none of the justices represent individuals or states. They represent the country as a whole, and then, only with respect to the law upon which our country was founded, the Constitution of the United States of America, and the federal laws eminating forth from our Constitution.

One of the reasons justices are appointed for life is to help ensure that no President, or even a series of Presidents, can populate the Supreme Court with justices all from one side of the liberal/conservative coin. In fact, it acts as a smoothing curve, much like taking a thirty-year moving average of a stock's performance to better gauge how it's done over time.

I have mixed views about the current court. While I applaud their Heller and McDonald decisions, their choice to give corporations a monetary voice in elections flies in the face of the very principles upon which our country was founded. I have no problem with a rich principle of a corporation giving campaign donations, but the corporation itself? It's not a person. "We the People" is about people, not corporations, particularly when many of those corporations are large, multi-national conglomerates. They can't vote, but they can bring huge multi-national amounts of campaign contributions to the table to influence U.S. Voters? I don't think that passes any rational sanity test.

Meanwhile, there have been calls for both Thomas and Kagen to recuse themselves on certain issues due to prior or outside involvement. I can see it in Kagen's case because she acted in an official capacity on a related issue. I cannot see it in Thomas' case, as everyone is entitled to participate in events of their own choosing when off the clock.

 

[Vanadium 50]

Let me give you a different interpretation of the facts of Citizens United. (I don't necessarily agree with this interpretation, but want to show how this can be viewed differently)

You have some citizens who feel a particular US Senator would make a poor President. By themselves, they don't feel like they can influence the outcome, so they band together and pool their funds to publish their views - it could be a pamphlet, it could be magazine, but in this case it happened to be a movie.

The Congress of the United States - which includes the very person these people are opposed to - decides such actions are illegal. Indeed, under these rules, it would have been illegal for Thomas Paine to have published Common Sense.

Rational Sanity vs. Common Sense.

 

[nismaratwork]

You know, sometimes I pine for the days when assasination was more common; why is it that nuts and psychopaths never seem to go after the Alitos, and Scalias of the world?

Noooo... we get a congresswoman in rehab, a dead federal judge, and a bunch of civilians... no John Lennon, no RFK... attacks from militia nuts.

WHERE are the organized psychopaths on the liberal side damn it?... and no, I'm not volunteering, nor endorsing... merely opining.

 

[Hurkyl]

their choice to give corporations a monetary voice in elections flies in the face of the very principles upon which our country was founded.

This isn't clear. What exactly are you asserting?

• Are you accusing the SCOTUS of engaging in legislature by making a ruling that conflicts with existing law?
• Are you accusing the SCOTUS of upholding existing law at a time you think they really ought to be engaging in legislature for the good of the nation?
• Something else entirely?

I have no problem with a rich principle of a corporation giving campaign donations, but the corporation itself? It's not a person.

But it is a person; that's the spirit of corporation laws. The relevant question to the courts is to what extent personhood is granted to corporations by existing law.

 

[nismaratwork]

This isn't clear. What exactly are you asserting?

• Are you accusing the SCOTUS of engaging in legislature by making a ruling that conflicts with existing law?
• Are you accusing the SCOTUS of upholding existing law at a time you think they really ought to be engaging in legislature for the good of the nation?
• Something else entirely?

But it is a person; that's the spirit of corporation laws. The relevant question to the courts is to what extent personhood is granted to corporations by existing law.

How about: Willfully ignoring the constitution in favor of ideology?

 

[BWV]

re Citizens United, the ACLU has been a consistent opponent of campaign finance restrictions and fully supported the decision. The issue is whether the rights afforded to individuals flow to the organizations that they form. Free speech means little when you can arbitrarily restrict the ability of an organization such as a union, trade organization, environmental group or business (all of which are considered corporations). The government admitted in court that the constitutional powers afforded to them could in theory apply to banning books. Furthermore, campaign finance laws are mostly incumbent protection acts (at least its the incentive for politicians to vote for them).

Ira Glasser, the former director of the ACLU opines:

...

These liberals, and others like them, who denounced the decision have failed to appreciate what a great ruling it was for the First Amendment, and what a huge victory it was for freedom of speech and against government censorship. Yes, censorship.
...

In these and many other cases over decades, not-for-profit cause groups of all kinds were repeatedly subjected to curbs on precisely the kind of speech the First Amendment was designed to protect. In the current case that has caused all the commotion, the victim was a not-for-profit group called Citizens United that wanted to distribute a film it had made criticizing Hillary Clinton and questioning her fitness for office. No good, said the law, you can't criticize her while she's running for office. Why? Because Citizens United was incorporated. So is the ACLU and so is pretty much every other cause organization. Should Planned Parenthood, for example, or NARAL Pro-Choice America be banned from criticizing Sarah Palin during a future campaign for office? That was precisely the question raised by the Citizens United case. Should the fact that such activist citizens' organizations are incorporated allow the government to bar their speech, especially when it matters most? That is the question the Court was asked to answer, and it answered correctly: such organizations' freedom of speech is protected by the First Amendment. Why liberals should be unhappy about that, or willing to tolerate the censorship of their own speech that would have resulted from a contrary decision is a mystery.

...

The statute in question in effect instituted a government licensing system for independent speech that mentioned a candidate by name in an electronic broadcast communication 60/30 days before an election, effectively granting the government the authority to silence such speech during that time, including speech by labor unions, the ACLU, Citizens United and any other similar organization....
The requirement to raise campaign dollars in small amounts discriminates against insurgent candidates and favors incumbents. Raising lots of contributions in small amounts requires name recognition and the support of many people, which insurgents usually don't have. In 1968, Gene McCarthy began his anti-war campaign against incumbent President Lyndon Johnson with only about 2% name recognition in New Hampshire. He had three major donors who gave him seven figures each--huge gifts in 1968-- when he challenged LBJ in the New Hampshire primary; those gifts would have constituted a crime today, and pretty much since the early seventies. Without that handful of large gifts, McCarthy would have had little chance to get his message out effectively against an incumbent. ...

When I testified in Congress over the years against such campaign finance restrictions on First Amendment grounds, I proposed many public finance alternatives: free air time for candidates who get on the ballot; the franking privilege for challenger candidates as well as incumbents, and direct funding for all Congressional candidates in adequate amounts. No one, not any Democrat, not any Republican, not any advocate of campaign equity, supported such suggestions. Why? Because they were not about to fund effective challenges to themselves.

So aside from the profound First Amendment problems created by all these laws, they have generally suppressed insurgent candidates, advantaged incumbents and increased inequity in election campaigns.

...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ira-glasser/understanding-the-emcitiz_b_447342.html?view=print

 

[Proton Soup]

i'm not sure things are much different than they ever were. justices may be a bit less insular than before.

 

[nismaratwork]

The ACLU also defends NAMBLA... I use them as a touchstone the way I'd use the NRA... not at all.

 

[Pengwuino]

is[/i] a person; that's the spirit of corporation laws. The relevant question to the courts is to what extent personhood is granted to corporations by existing law.

The way I see it, it is almost silly to think corporations should be cut out of the loop when it comes to voicing their opinion in elections. There is the obvious issue of taxation without representation.

 

[nismaratwork]

The way I see it, it is almost silly to think corporations should be cut out of the loop when it comes to voicing their opinion in elections. There is the obvious issue of taxation without representation.

Then we should treat the use of loopholes the way the IRS treats individuals. Besides, each person within the corporation is represented... the entity itself is absurd as a "person" with rights to speach.

 

[BWV]

Then we should treat the use of loopholes the way the IRS treats individuals. Besides, each person within the corporation is represented... the entity itself is absurd as a "person" with rights to speach.

So the Sierra Club, the UAW or the ACLU does not have the right to free speech?

 

[Pengwuino]

Then we should treat the use of loopholes the way the IRS treats individuals. Besides, each person within the corporation is represented... the entity itself is absurd as a "person" with rights to speach.

I don't understand the comparison. Normal middle and lower class people use loopholes as well. My father has run a tax preparation business for years and people do shady things all the time. Some people have been doing flat out illegal things for years, they're just not big enough fish to try to catch. People still use legal loopholes though, it's nothing new and perfectly legal.

Also, each person within the corporation is represented, but they're also taxed separately. And as the poster after your post said, what about special interest groups such as the UAW and Sierra Club? Teachers unions? American Bar Association? There are a plethora of groups that even everyday people are part of where their freedom to have a voice in elections is never questioned. And legally, they are sometimes almost indistinguishable from corporations such as GE, Apple, Boeing, etc.

 

[nismaratwork]

So the Sierra Club, the UAW or the ACLU does not have the right to free speech?

I didn't realize they were for-profit organizations.

 

[BWV]

I didn't realize they were for-profit organizations.

neither is Citizens United

 

[nismaratwork]

I don't understand the comparison. Normal middle and lower class people use loopholes as well. My father has run a tax preparation business for years and people do shady things all the time. Some people have been doing flat out illegal things for years, they're just not big enough fish to try to catch. People still use legal loopholes though, it's nothing new and perfectly legal.

Yes, and as you say, not big enough to fry; there is an assymetry here that isn't going away no matter how you try to justify it. How many people would need to act together collectively, and destructively, to do what just a handful of financial firms managed? Again, there are differnces, not just in the law, but in how each are treated for practical reasons; why should that stop at speach?

Also, each person within the corporation is represented, but they're also taxed separately. And as the poster after your post said, what about special interest groups such as the UAW and Sierra Club? Teachers unions? American Bar Association? There are a plethora of groups that even everyday people are part of where their freedom to have a voice in elections is never questioned. And legally, they are sometimes almost indistinguishable from corporations such as GE, Apple, Boeing, etc.

Yes, they are taxed seperately, and a large measure of profits made as a result are concentrated and retained in the corporation. Yet, the individuals who made that are not part of how that corporation "votes" with its money. That same corporation doesn't have all of the benefits of citizenship, nor all of the burdens. I'd add... they can LEAVE this country, or any other, outsource jobs, and otherwise do things an individual has to sacrifice far more to achieve.

This is pure sophistry that we're frankly only discussing because the SCOTUS is slightly more than half a group of right-wing ideologues with clear loyalties. In addition, you have mental giants (sarcasm) like Alito and Thomas willing to either chip in their skewed view with no care for the actual constition, or like the latter, just a shill.

I'm not impressed... and frankly I'd rather see the ACLU, Sierra Club, and other lobbying firms killed, rather than including multinationals in with people. The absurdity shouldn't be lost on your, regardless of your political or social leanings.

As for indistinguishable... for profit, not for profit; there, I made a distinction!

 

[nismaratwork]

neither is Citizens United

That is a rather inept dodge, given the implications we all agree are present in the ruling.

 

[Al68]

I have no problem with a rich principle of a corporation giving campaign donations, but the corporation itself? It's not a person...

This has been addressed in other threads, but a corporation cannot be determined to be the relevant "speaker" of political speech unless the corporation is treated as a (proxy) person for that purpose.

If one asks the question "who paid for that ad?", the answer can only be a corporation if it is considered a proxy person, ie a proxy for the real people who really paid for the ad. If you do not treat a corporation as a person for that purpose, then you cannot logically make the claim that the ad was paid for by the corporation instead of real people.

Without corporate personhood, a corporation is merely a tool, a tool used by real people for their speech. Real people, not their tool, is the relevant "speaker".

You can logically treat a corporation as a person, or not, but you can't logically have it both ways.

 

[Proton Soup]

You can logically treat a corporation as a person, or not, but you can't logically have it both ways.

i think we can logically have different kinds of corporations, with different kinds of personhood, and different kinds of rights and obligations. the decision involving Citizens United seems to revolve around actual persons using a non-profit corporation as a vehicle for exercising freedom of association and speech.

given that the corporation is simply a tool for allowing business to carry out certain types of legal transactions, we can logically limit the rights. we don't allow them to vote. so why create them all equal?

 

[Ivan Seeking]

given that the corporation is simply a tool for allowing business to carry out certain types of legal transactions, we can logically limit the rights. we don't allow them to vote. so why create them all equal?

Nor can corporations be held legally accountable as can a real person. They are in effect supercitizens. I'll take the deal that I can break any law, but the worst thing that happens is that I get sued or fined. I want the same rights that a corporation has!

Can a corporation be recruited against its will and forced, essentially, to commit suicide in defense of the country, or is that special honor reserved for us lesser real people?

We have a right to life. Is a corporation a life form? Are corporations entitled to the pursuit of happiness?

 

[drankin]

Just curious, what would "scrutiny" of the SCOTUS look like? And what authority would the scrutinizing party have? I understand the sentiment but I don't see a Constitutional means discussed here.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Is there any guarantee that the political actions of a corporation actually reflect the political views of those who own the corporation? Or are the political views of an elite few leveraged using the wealth of the many without their consent?

If I join a politically active group like The Sierra Club, I do so because I agree with their mission. However, if I buy stock in a company, I am trying to make a profit. I am not making a political statement or voicing support for the political agenda of those running the company.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Just curious, what would "scrutiny" of the SCOTUS look like? And what authority would the scrutinizing party have? I understand the sentiment but I don't see a Constitutional means discussed here.

I didn't vote because I don't understand the motivation for the question. My understanding is that we need is a Constitutional amendment defining a real person, a legal person in the abstract, and how rights are to be applied, not a revision of the SC.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

I'm pretty sure that any oversite of the SCOTUS would contradict the purpose of the SCOTUS. They are the highest court. If you put something above it, that would be the highest court. Who would overlook that?

 

[ThomasT]

Apparently, Liberals are attacking the conservatives at SCOTUS.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20110307/pl_politico/50757" .

Personally, I feel any attack against SCOTUS is sorely misplaced ...

But you said:

... their choice to give corporations a monetary voice in elections flies in the face of the very principles upon which our country was founded. I have no problem with a rich principle of a corporation giving campaign donations, but the corporation itself? It's not a person. "We the People" is about people, not corporations, particularly when many of those corporations are large, multi-national conglomerates. They can't vote, but they can bring huge multi-national amounts of campaign contributions to the table to influence U.S. Voters? I don't think that passes any rational sanity test.

So, it isn't clear to me what you mean by "any attack against SCOTUS is sorely misplaced ...".

I agree with your criticism, and statements by others in this thread supporting the criticism, of the 'corporate political contribution' decision.

Anyway, we know that the members of any SCOTUS are going to be appointed because of their perceived biases. Their official decisions are constantly scrutinized and criticised. And that's a good thing, isn't it?

So, what was your poll about? Some sort of official oversight? A congressional committee or whatever? If so, I agree that that would be a bad idea -- logically, as well as practically, absurd given that we're all biased.

 

[nismaratwork]

Is there any guarantee that the political actions of a corporation actually reflect the political views of those who own the corporation? Or are the political views of an elite few leveraged using the wealth of the many without their consent?

If I join a politically active group like The Sierra Club, I do so because I agree with their mission. However, if I buy stock in a company, I am trying to make a profit. I am not making a political statement or voicing support for the political agenda of those running the company.

This, and your point about practical evasion of criminal prosecution really is all that should be needed... the rest is chaff in the face of that. Only in the contorted view that corporations are JUST like citizens can the ruling be justified, and it flies in the face of established jurisprudence.

 

[BobG]

I'm not really sure about the right or wrong of public scrutiny of public officials. Certainly, the public has a right to scrutinize things such as how a Supreme Court justice voted and to scrutinize things that could affect how a justice votes, but there is some point where that scrutiny becomes an invasion of privacy.

Perhaps that's the cost of public service, but couldn't that result in some unintended consequences?

One of the things that can influence a justice's vote is his/her personal experiences. The confirmation hearings for Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito had to be a pretty significant personal experience in their life, as the hearings put their personal lives on public display. Even the political activities of Clarence Thomas's wife are subject to public scrutiny.

There's no way to know exactly what personal experiences (if any) influenced Alito's dissent in the Snyder vs Phelps case, but one of his main concerns was a world where free speech has the potential to turn private affairs (a family funeral) into a public spectacle. This concern was echoed by Justice Breyer in spite of his concurring with the majority opinion. The role of the media and the internet in turning the Snyder funeral into a public event was mostly avoided and left both Breyer and Alito with some troubling thoughts.

If Thomas's own personal experience during his confirmation hearing and the scrutiny of his wife's activities aren't enough, how about a hack book written by a former sexual companion being published and how that book can be used by gay activists to criticize Thomas's stand against same sex marriage (Thomas supposedly wasn't too disgusted by female-female sex). And consider that the only reason any publisher would have published that book is because it had dirt on a famous person.

At some point, too much public scrutiny of justices' personal lives is going to result in more justices deciding personal privacy of all individuals (including them) needs more protection even if it infringes on things such as free speech.

 

[BobG]

The way I see it, it is almost silly to think corporations should be cut out of the loop when it comes to voicing their opinion in elections. There is the obvious issue of taxation without representation.

Every American citizen that owns stock in that corporation already has a right to voice their opinion in elections. Are you suggesting that the foreign stock holders should also have the same right since they're essentially paying US taxes via the corporation?

 

[BWV]

The silly thing is the focus on TV advertising, like somehow it is 1979 and people actually watch commercials

Restrictions on campaign advertising benefit incumbents, all things being equal (which is why congress eagerly votes for bills like McCain Feingold)

If corporations really could swing elections with advertising then the re-election rate for House incumbents would not currently be 94% (http://www.opensecrets.org/bigpicture/reelect.php)

the real scandal is that there are very few, if any, competitive congressional elections in the US thanks to gerrymandering and laws about campaign contributions and advertising.

 

[nismaratwork]

The silly thing is the focus on TV advertising, like somehow it is 1979 and people actually watch commercials

Restrictions on campaign advertising benefit incumbents, all things being equal (which is why congress eagerly votes for bills like McCain Feingold)

If corporations really could swing elections with advertising then the re-election rate for House incumbents would not currently be 94% (http://www.opensecrets.org/bigpicture/reelect.php)

the real scandal is that there are very few, if any, competitive congressional elections in the US thanks to gerrymandering and laws about campaign contributions and advertising.

No... I think it's all quite scandalous, and you're assuming that incumbants aren't already the choice of X, Y, or Z corporation or group.

 

[Al68]

given that the corporation is simply a tool for allowing business to carry out certain types of legal transactions, we can logically limit the rights.

Limit the rights of the tool, you say? How is it that this can make sense to people?

Restricting speech limits the rights of real people. Real people, not their tools. It's not the "rights" of a printing press, a TV set, an antenna, or a corporation being infringed by such restrictions. It's the rights of real people.

 

[Al68]

Nor can corporations be held legally accountable as can a real person. They are in effect supercitizens. I'll take the deal that I can break any law, but the worst thing that happens is that I get sued or fined. I want the same rights that a corporation has!

Can a corporation be recruited against its will and forced, essentially, to commit suicide in defense of the country, or is that special honor reserved for us lesser real people?

We have a right to life. Is a corporation a life form? Are corporations entitled to the pursuit of happiness?

Why not at least read the ACLU's position linked to earlier? Even if you disagree with it, at least you will know that nobody is claiming that a corporation, as a mere tool used by people, has any rights. It's the people using the tool (corporation) that have rights.

 

[nismaratwork]

Why not at least read the ACLU's position linked to earlier? Even if you disagree with it, at least you will know that nobody is claiming that a corporation, as a mere tool used by people, has any rights. It's the people using the tool (corporation) that have rights.

Yet only a handful of people steer a corporation in its political leanings, and being a stockholder or employee isn't a great position to move it from.

To your post at Proton... a corporation isn't a good political tool for anything, but forwarding itself and its own interests. Something like the ACLU is a specific set of lobbying initiatives and lawsuits that you can buy into, or not, with your donation being material support to a political tool.

A corporation in the sense we've been talking about them here is a financial tool, not always or even often sharing the interests of the current host company. (See WWII for examples if needed).

 

[Jack21222]

But it is a person; that's the spirit of corporation laws. The relevant question to the courts is to what extent personhood is granted to corporations by existing law.

No, a corporation IS NOT a person, regardless of how the law defines things. If the law defined house cats to be a species of fish, would you be arguing "but a cat IS a fish?"

"Person" has had a meaning LONG before these particular laws were in place.

 

[nismaratwork]

No, a corporation IS NOT a person, regardless of how the law defines things. If the law defined house cats to be a species of fish, would you be arguing "but a cat IS a fish?"

"Person" has had a meaning LONG before these particular laws were in place.

Hey now, didn't the Catholic Church in medieval times define some bird to be a fish so that it could be eaten on fridays? Damn... I forget which...

Still, it was never a fish, as you say.

 

[Gokul43201]

If the law defined house cats to be a species of fish, would you be arguing "but a cat IS a fish?"

If we were discussing matters of law, and we are, then yes, I would be perfectly justified in arguing that.