Legal Pros Say No to Citizens United

by Jeffrey D. Clements and Ben T. Clements

Experts call for Constitutional amendment to take back democracy from corporations.

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. FEC, corporate money has poured into the 2010 elections in unprecedented amounts. Now, a bipartisan group of leading law professors, former state attorneys general, former prosecutors, and prominent attorneys from across the country has signed a letter calling on Congress to consider a Constitutional amendment to overrule Citizens United and return elections and government to the people. We joined that call because the notion of “corporate rights” expressed in Citizens United is antithetical to Constitutional principles of free speech, democracy, and self-government.

In that case, the Court ruled that the First Amendment prohibits restrictions on so-called “independent expenditures” by corporations to attempt to defeat or elect candidates. The Court equated corporations with people for purposes of free speech rights and struck down key provisions of the federal Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act.

The creation of absolute corporate “speech” rights to spend money on elections is contrary to Constitutional principles and to the American vision of self-government by free people. That vision cannot coexist with elections dominated by hundreds of millions of dollars of corporate electioneering money.

More: http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/what-happy-families-know/legal-pros-say-no-to-citizens-united?utm_source=wkly20101119&utm_medium=yesemail&utm_campaign=titleClements

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What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy? ~ Mohandas K. Gandhi

The great danger for American democracy is not from the protesters. That democracy is too poorly realized for us to consider critics -- even rebels -- as the chief problem. Its fulfillment requires us all, living in an ossified system which sustains too much killing and too much selfishness, to join the protest. ~ Howard Zinn

It is possible to read the history of this country as one long struggle to extend the liberties established in our Constitution to everyone in America. ~ Molly Ivins