Constitutional Law, Courts, Free Speech, Politics, Supreme Court, Uncategorized

Chief Justice Roberts and McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission

Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Weekend Contributor

First, there was Citizens United. Now, we have the Supreme Court’s recent ruling in the McCutcheon case. It does appear that our country’s campaign finance laws may have been “eviscerated”—as noted by Justice Breyer when he wrote that, taken together with Citizens United, McCutcheon “eviscerates our Nation’s campaign finance laws, leaving a remnant incapable of dealing with the grave problems of democratic legitimacy that those laws were intended to resolve.”

Corporations are people…money is speech. The more money one has to spend…the more “speech” one can afford to buy—especially where political campaigns are concerned.

Dahlia Lithwick (Slate), in writing about Chief Justice John Roberts after the court’s ruling in the McCutcheon case, said that it seemed weird: “The man takes the Metro to work, and yet he handily dismisses what every human American knows to be true: That if dollars are speech, and billions are more speech, then billionaires who spend money don’t do so for the mere joy of making themselves heard, but because it offers them a return on their investment.”

Amy Davidson (The New Yorker) said that Roberts relied on a very narrow measure of corruption in the McCutcheon ruling: “Ingratiation and access … are not corruption.” She added that the argument, in effect, is that political parties themselves cannot be corrupted: “There is a clear, administrable line between money beyond the base limits funneled in an identifiable way to a candidate—for which the candidate feels obligated—and money within the base limits given widely to a candidate’s party—for which the candidate, like all other members of the party, feels grateful.”

Roberts wrote, “Congress may target only a specific type of corruption—‘quid pro quo’ corruption.” Roberts explains what isn’t “quid pro quo” with regard to spending large sums of money on elections:

Spending large sums of money in connection with elections, but not in connection with an effort to control the exercise of an officeholder’s official duties, does not give rise to such quid pro quo corruption. Nor does the possibility that an individual who spends large sums may garner “influence over or access to” elected officials or political parties. And because the Government’s interest in preventing the appearance of corruption is equally confined to the appearance of quid pro quo corruption, the Government may not seek to limit the appearance of mere influence or access.

SOURCES
Justice Roberts Hearts Billionaires: The chief either doesn’t believe, or doesn’t care, that money corrupts politics. (Slate)

The Devastating, Sneaky Genius of John Roberts’ Opinions: His McCutcheon decision pretends to be mild but then wrecks what remains of campaign-finance law. (Slate)

A Blistering Dissent in ‘McCutcheon’: Conservatives Substituted Opinion for Fact (Moyers & Company)

Justice Roberts Defends the Embattled Rich in McCutcheon (The New Yorker)

The John Roberts Project (The New Yorker)

 

287 thoughts on “Chief Justice Roberts and McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission”

  2. ” The more money one has to spend…the more “speech” one can afford to buy” This is obvious, and the way it should be. This is why the freedom of the press does not obligate anyone with a press to exercise someone else’s right for free. The alternative to your statement would be lead to the inability to exercise our rights to speech as the forums for speech would close due to bankruptcy, or the complete government takeover and control of the means of expression, which also amounts to suppression.

    Remember, unions and moveon.org are corporations, and should therefore be banned from discussion politics or making political contributions. That is the logical conclusion from the belief that corporations should have no rights of speech. Doing so might very improve the tenor of political discussion.

  3. In the following video, Bill Moyers and Paul Krugman discuss Thomas Piketty’s book “Capital in the Twenty-First Century:

    What the 1% Don’t Want You to Know

  4. I still don’t understand why we do not respond to these rulings by literally tying money to votes. If you can’t vote, you can’t contribute. Registered to vote in Colorado? Sorry, no contributing to any campaign in any other state. Live in St. Paul? Then you don’t get to spend money on Minneapolis politics. Not a human, so not (yet) eligible to vote? No contributing to anything.

    Restricting the people’s right to do stuff that would damage the nation as a whole is constitutional, isn’t it? Allowing foreign interests to influence a vote would expose the nation to excessive control by outsiders, which any career political manipulator would be happy to decry.

    Not perfect, and of course it would eventually succumb to the machinations of the evil ones, but it would be refreshing for a while.

  6. Paul,

    There are wealthy Democrats/Liberals–as well as rich Republicans/Conservatives–who contribute big money to political campaigns. I’m against big money buying politicians/politcal favors/legislation that benefits them. I don’t care if the wealthiest contributors are red or blue. Their money perverts our system of government.

  10. Elaine….. Someone thread jacking….. No…..

    Paul….. Anyone with an ounce of decency would want the thieving Koch brothers prosecuted…… Just goes to show people are in awe of people with money…., stolen at best…

    1. Elaine – We are talking about money in politics. You opened the door.

      AY – back up your statement that they are thieving. I am certainly not in awe of Bloomberg or Soros.

  13. We’re going around and around in circles with this corruption issue.
    Giving testimony isn’t going to be easy either.

  15. Good posting Elaine….

    And yes the thieving Koch family ought to go to jail….

    1. magginkat – the NY Post is a source and they have been running a series of articles on attacks by the left on the Koch Bros. This is article number five. The Evil Bloomberg.

  17. @Paul Schulte – The NY Post for a source? Your must be joking. The title says one thing. The article says something else.

  18. Totally disagree.
    Citizens United fundamentally was about the right of a group of people to have the same free speech rights as single person, whether under the guise of a named group, union, or corporation.
    McCutcheon merely stands for the right of a person to put, spend or give his own, personal, money in whatever inherently legal direction he feels like, and to whomever he feels like.
    Neither of these rulings are wrong or bad, they are release of constraints of free speech and agency.
    It is only due to propositional fear mongering that any argument can be made against them.
    But those same ‘inference upon inference’ arguments can be made against any other personal freedom that someone doesn’t like. You just put up a hypothetical, treat it as true, and then base another hypothetical upon it.
    Before you know you have Dante’s inferno right here on Earth, impending not actual of course, but for the hysteria it makes little difference.

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