Stare Decisis is Bunk @ the USSC

[dgs49]

(Reuters) - In a blow to those trying to restrict corporate spending in U.S. elections, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ruled against a century-old law in Montana that set limits on business spending for political campaigns in the state. By a 5-4 vote, the country's highest court ruled for three corporations - the American Tradition Partnership Inc political advocacy group, a nonprofit group that promotes shooting sports, and a small family-owned painting business - all of which challenged the law as violating their free-speech rights.

The ruling effectively applies to state and local elections and said there was "no serious doubt" the Montana law was covered by same legal reasoning as the U.S. Supreme Court's January 2010 ruling in the federal campaign finance case known as Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. In that case the court split 5-4 along conservative-liberal ideological lines to rule that corporations had a constitutional free-speech right to spend freely to support or oppose political candidates in federal elections, a ruling sharply criticized by President Barack Obama.

So without getting into whether anyone likes Citizens United, what we have here is four justices of the Supreme Court blatantly violating a precendent that that court established just a few short years ago. There is no question that Citizens United applied - the counter-arguments were specious nonsense that would have led to the ridiculous conclusion that corporate spending can only be restrained by law when there is a serious risk of corruption.

Isn't it bizarre then, when (Democrat) Senate inquisitors grill USSC nominees and demand that they state clearly and unequivocably that they will be bound by prior precedents and not do any "legislating from the bench." Clearly, the court members couldn't care less what the precedent holds, and in no way feel themselves bound by it.

And of course I can't resist pointing out that Barry & The Progressives, who are so horrified by the evils of corporate political advertising and spending, have no problem whatsoever when unions do the same thing (and more), and provided us with Exhibit A of how such spending can lead to corruption in the GM case, where the Administration prevented the rational application of longstanding Bankruptcy laws in order to repay the UAW for its financial and in-kind contributions to Democrat candidates.

Again, this is a victory for the First Amendment and one for the People. Corporations are fictitious entities and merely represent the interests of their stakeholders. Why should they lose their free speech rights simply because they formed a corporation?

[Scooter]

So without getting into whether anyone likes Citizens United, what we have here is four justices of the Supreme Court blatantly violating a precendent that that court established just a few short years ago.

Which is exactly what the conservative majority did when they overturned huge portions of the 2003 decision in McConnell v. FEC in order to reach the decision they came to in Citizens United. Funny, didn't hear you bleating about the sanctity of stare decisis then, which says that this has everything to do with your opinion on the merits and nothing to do with any legal principle.

[Sue U]

Scooter beat me to it. Citizens United overturned not one, but two precdential Supreme Court decisions (McConnell v. FEC and Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce) by directly srtiking down bipartisan federal campaign finance legislation (McCain-Feingold Act), indirectly stirking down political campaign spending portions of the 1947 Taft-Hartley (National Labor Relations) Act, and arguably undercutting Congressional policy going back to the Tillman Act (1907). So much for both stare decisis and legislative deference. You want to see "legislating from the bench"? There is no clearer example than this.

[Scooter]

A close second would be the conservative minority's attempt in Kelo v. City of New London to read a restriction on expropriations for economic development into the 5th Amendment, and where conservatives all over the country howled and shrieked at the majority's refusal to overturn decades of precedent and rewrite the Constitution to suit their view of property rights.

[dgs49]

My point was NOT against the Libs on the Court, but merely that the Justices (all of them) NEVER pay any attention to precedent. They ALWAYS look at each case as if they had never seen anything like it and vote their own personal views. They write their opinions in a way that gives lip service to Stare Decisis but it is all bullshit.

Thus, when they are challenged in Senate hearings about whether they will honor Court precedents, they are ALL lying. They WANT to overturn precedents that they don't like. That's why they want to be on the Court.

This case is just the most recent - and a humorously blatant - example of justices REFUSING to acknowledge a clear precedent of very recent vintage.

[rubato]

I own stock via mutual funds and the like as well as some stock in my employer's company. None has ever asked me what my opinions were about who they should support in elections.

Calling this a victory for free speech for the people is stupid. This is a victory for those who have already perverted our democracy and bled us for 30 years.



yrs,
rubato

[Scooter]

My point was NOT against the Libs on the Court

Of course it wasn't. Hence the repeated references to the "four justices", "Democrats", "Progressives", etc.

You got caught with your foot in your mouth and now are trying to cover by completely recasting what you said initially. Might have worked if the thread was already six pages long, but since your two posts are only inches apart...

[dgs49]

(a) The officers of the corporation who decide what issues and candidates are intelligent enough to choose those that will provide commercial benefit to the enterprise. They do not have to poll the shareholders and/or employees to make those choices.

For example, my company is in the nuclear power business. Our lobbyists are perfectly attuned to which legislators and which draft legislation is better for our industry and hence for me. As it turns out, I can't own stock in the company, but I fully support any money they give to supportive candidates.

(b) The operative sentence of my initial posting here was, "So without getting into whether anyone likes Citizens United, what we have here is four justices of the Supreme Court blatantly violating a precendent that that court established just a few short years ago." It is not partisan, and would apply equally to the four conservative justices voting on an abortion clarification or whatever.

But the fact is that in the Senate hearings, Republican nominees are especially grilled by Democrat Senators, who, in effect, demand that they promise never to overturn the decisions that seek to make abortion available with no restrictions. I can't think of a comparable issue on the other side of the political divide.

My point is non-partisan, and applies to both camps. Neither one gives a rat's ass about the precendents they are setting, or acknowledges them (other than through lip service in their opinions), and will continue espousing the same legal philosophies no matter what last week's USSC decision said. Stare Decisis means nothing to them.

[Scooter]

So you agree that stare decisis meant nothing to the Republican side of the bench when it overturned decades iof precedent, and a century of clear legislative intent, when it reached its ruling in Citizen's United. One can only speculate why you didn't feel the need to mention it at the time...

[Sue U]

(a) The officers of the corporation who decide what issues and candidates are intelligent enough to choose those that will provide commercial benefit to the enterprise. They do not have to poll the shareholders and/or employees to make those choices.

That is precisely the point. The officers and directors of a corporation are using the shareholders' money to fund political programs that are not legitimately part of any corporate charter or scope of business, and that the shareholders may or may not agree with. If the shareholders want to spend their own dividends making such contributions, that's fine. But the officers/directors should not be permitted to take other peoples' money to fund political campaigns -- whether or not they are "coordinated" with a candidate or party. Despite Mitt Romney's declaration, corporations are not people, they do not have the rights of people, and they need not be treated as people.

ETA:

Also, "Libs on the Court"??? There hasn't been a genuine liberal on the Supreme Court since Thurgood Marshall retired (to be replaced by Clarence Thomas) more than twenty years ago.

[dgs49]

Sue,this is not something that I care much about, but I have to disagree with you. If you own stock in, for example, a pharmaceutical company, wouldn't you want that company to promote candidates and legislation that would further the company's interests w/r/t patent protections, regulatory constraints, and so on? That is a perfectly legitimate expenditure of company funds. In fact, it could pay dramatic "dividends" if a single piece of favorable legislation were passed. As a stockholder, how could you object? Why would you object?

If they do things you disagree with, you would sell the stock or use your shareholders' votes to change the Board.

No libs on the court? I almost spilled my coffee on that knee-slapper!

[Long Run]

I don't get the point of the thread. Honoring prior decisions, stare decisis, and trying to be consistent with such decisions is not and has never been an immutable principle of judicial reasoning. If a judge thinks a prior decision was wrongly decided, it is the right/obligation of him or her to urge a different result from the precedent case(s). It would be odd indeed if the four justices who dissented in Citizens United were to change their mind and adopt a reasoning they just two years ago stated they disagreed with.

In terms of precedential case law, there is a continuum of cases that are considered well settled to those that there is a split of opinion as to whether they were correctly decided. Citizens United is certainly one of those cases at the far end of the split opinion spectrum.