<p>Okay, you can panic whenever you want. Although from your perspective, I would be more worried about the survival of Obamacare than this issue. “Activism” obviously has a different meaning depending upon your frame of reference. I suppose if Obama had the opportunity to replace one of the 5 justices, who don’t wake up everyday interpreting a living Constitution according to whatever impulse grabs them, I might panic also.</p>
<p>wait, are you implying one of our activist justices may have a preexisting condition not covered by his current health care plan? I wouldn’t know about that.</p>
<p>^^^^^</p>
<p>So some of the justices may uphold the constitutionality of Obamacare because they may have deficient health care plans. I am not sure that would surprise me, although from what I hear the federal govt has pretty good plans for its employees.</p>
<p>^^Shouldn’t somethng be done to help that poor Justice? Sounds like it may even impact that proper functioning of the economy, to have too many Supreme Court Justices with inadequate health insurance.</p>
<p>Oh Oh, we’re digressing from the subject; I am not sure we want to debate the pros and cons of Obamacare. I will say having adequate health insurance doesn’t do you lot of good if your access to excellent medical care is compromised by a massive govt bureaucracy and well-intended regulations that increase the demand and cost of medical care without a corresponding increase in the supply of healthcare providers.</p>
<p>^Alas, it’s tough not being a corporation – real people bleed, get sick and suffer pain.</p>
<p>JW, obviously you’re correct inasmuch as corporations don’t bleed or suffer pain like a real person. However, this rationale doesn’t address the law and the case history regarding the due process rights and responsibilities accorded to corporations under the 14th Amendment and a number Supreme Court cases starting in the late 19th century and continuing for the next 100 years. It is settled law, although some would disagree, that corporations are recognized to have many of the same rights as people as opposed to natural persons or citizens, where the courts have drawn a distinction between the two. </p>
<p>The law is very complicated in this area and would necessitate a long dissertation explaining the origins of the legal theory elevating corporations to the same status of people. I am no expert, but I know enough that even though your emotional assertion may feel good and even resonate with your kindred spirits, it is not an accurate representation of the law. Remember, we live in a country of laws, not the impassioned beliefs held by some of our citizens. Sorry for the lecture.</p>
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<p>It shouldn’t be that complicated. According to Justice Scalia, you should be able to point to the Constitution and find where it says, corporations enjoy the same rights as natural persons. That’s his judicial philosophy which he calls, “originalism”, in a nutshell.</p>
<p>^^^^^
You may want to go to the lecture and ask him, although it wouldn’t be necessary because he has made it very clear in his opinion:</p>
<p>“The [First] Amendment is written in terms of “speech,” not speakers. Its text offers no foothold for excluding any category of speaker, from single individuals to partnerships of individuals, to unincorporated associations of individuals, to incorporated associations of individuals–and the dissent offers no evidence about the original meaning of the text to support any such exclusion. We are therefore simply left with the question whether the speech at issue in this case is “speech” covered by the First Amendment. No one says otherwise.”</p>
<p>He also said, “To assure the fairness of elections by preventing disproportionate expression of the views of any single powerful group, your Government has decided that the following associations of persons shall be prohibited from speaking or writing in support of any candidate. I dissent because that principle is contrary to our case law and incompatible with the absolutely central truth of the First Amendment: that government cannot be trusted to assure, through censorship, the “fairness” of political debate.”</p>
<p>^^^In other words, he can’t find any reference to corporations in the Constitution, so in order to make his decision consistent with his philosophy, he has to back it with pure assertion. He’s going to have to do better than that at Wesleyan.</p>
<p>Let me repeat his most salient point, “that government cannot be trusted to assure, through censorship, the “fairness” of political debate.”</p>
<p>^^Are you equating limits on campaign spending with censorship?.</p>
<p>^^^ It’s a slippery slope</p>
<p>Edit: I don’t particularly trust govt (politicians) to restrict political speech.</p>
<p>In Citizens United, the issue was not campaign spending. Citizen United was a non-profit corporation that had produced a film critical of Hillary Clinton and attempted to air the film in violation of the McCain-Feingold Act. Under this law, they were prohibited to have the movie shown on television within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of a general election. This sure seems like an example of govt attempting to control political debate through censorship. It may not be an egregious example, but it is worrisome that politicians are determining the guidelines for when and how the opposition is allowed to criticize them.</p>
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<p>parent57 - In all honesty, I think this is where your lack of legal training betrays itself. <em>Of course</em> <em>Citizens United</em> was about campaign spending. McCain-Feingold is about campaign spending.</p>
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<p>Let’s go back too my comment @post25 (which, btw, you said, was too narrow an interpretation):
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<p>Let’s be clear about this: Citizens United was a Political Action Committee. Before <em>Citizens United</em> there was a pretty clear distinction made between PACs and for-profit corporations. A PAC could not have as its <em>primary</em> purpose the defeat or the election of a particular candidate although it could freely advocate for a particular cause or issue. They were supposed to exist for educational purposes only. All of those distinctions were wiped out by the Court’s decision in CU. </p>
<p>OTOH, if you were General Electric, clearly a FOR-profit corporation, you could not produce campaign ads for or against a particular candidate in an election. Why? Because, for over a hundred years the Court saw no difference between contributing directly to the Republican party in order to produce an ad critical of Hillary Clinton – which is prohibited under the 1907 Tillman Act – and producing the SAME EXACT AD yourself, if you were General Electric. The Court’s majority seems to think there is a distinction where common sense sees none.</p>
<p>As I’ve repeated several times now, Justice Scalia chose to toss a hunded years of legal precedent out the window in order to give Citizens United a win.</p>
<p>Okay, I meant direct campaign contributions. United Citizens did not change the law with regard to direct contributions. You keep referring to the Tillman Act and 100 years of precedent, except you are wrong. This is a red herring; Obama and you can keep saying it all you want, but that doesn’t make it true. Maybe the groupies and hard core will fall for it, but people who understand the law will not be fooled. All Citizen United did was overturn one provision of McCain Feingold, allowing PACs or corporations to use soft money for political speech referencing a specific candidate within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of a general election. This has nothing to do with Tillman or any law that preceded McCain Feingold. So much for rolling back 100 years of law.</p>
<p>Scalia is correct. Having politicians regulating political speech should concern all people who cherish our civil liberties and individual freedoms. A few years back, the Democratic House tried to pass legislation which would have severely curtailed indirect campaign contributions by corporations, although would have allowed it for unions. I would guess you were probably in favor of this legislation, even though it demonstrates how politicians will always attempt to manipulate the laws to protect their incumbency and preserve their power. No, I don’t trust govt to tinker with the First Amendment; as a matter of fact, I rarely trust govt to act in our best interests. I quote the Deputy Prime Minister of Great Britain: “The natural inclination of government is to hoard power and information; to accrue power to itself in the name of the public good.” If you care to look, you will find countless examples of govt abusing it powers to stifle dissent throughout history. JW, take off your partisan hat, because all politicians (both Parties) are predisposed to protecting their prerogatives at the expense of the people.</p>
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<p>P57 - You can’t have it both ways. You can’t quote dicta (those sidebars by which justices make sense of those endless case citatons), like you did back at post#49 and then pretend that <em>Citizens United</em> is just about one tiny provision of McCain-Feingold. </p>
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<p>Scalia is wrong. Corporations do not have the same First Amendment rights as living, breathing human beings. Corporations do not procreate, they do not get sick and die, they do not earn money by the sweat of their brow (in fact, they have no sweat glands.) Extending the same First Amendment rights to non-humans is absurd. What next? Robots? It’s easy enough to call a robot a corporation. Pets? People leave estates, complete with trustees, to their pets all the time. Or, how about just cutting to the chase, and declaring all dead people corporations? Elvis and Marilyn Monroe are still making money. Thanks to Justice Scalia they can run ads against Hillary Clinton – even though they died while before she even graduated college. </p>
<p>Maybe all those Chicago headstone counters were on to something.</p>
<p>JW, you really didn’t respond to the reasons why I agree with Scalia. This argument that corporations are not people is a sideshow. I could argue corporations consist of shareholders/employees and that any contributions are made on behalf of the owners of the corporation, who are most certainly people. But it doesn’t deal with the issues addressed by Scalia in the opinion. Read the last paragraph of my previous post.</p>
<p>^^I did read it and my response is that the only difference between Eric Cantor (R-7th Dist. VA) and Justice Scalia is that Eric Cantor can (theoretically) be voted out of office.</p>
<p>the much anticipated day has arrived. There will be ample demonstrations of free speech; a lot has been generated already, ranging from various radical points of light, to my favorite conservative alum, Mytheos Holt (for whom, unfortunately, I can’t give the link, due to the TOA.)</p>
<p>Then, there is this from Dean Culliton:
[props to <em>Wesleying</em>, the allstudent-run blog for the original entry]</p>
<p>Here’s hoping for a safe, sane, “teaching moment” for everyone – including Justice Scalia.
Remember kids, “Play nice. Play smart.”</p>