Was Supreme Court Ruling Good for America?

Written by Byron Williams

Wednesday, 27 January 2010

Madison v. Marbury, Brown v. Board of Education, and Roe v. Wade represent landmark Supreme Court decisions.

While we can debate their meaning, there can be little dispute about their impact on the nation.

The Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision last week that overturned two decisions and threw out parts of a 63-year-old law, we may soon add Citizens United v. Federal Election Committee to that dubious or vaunted list depending on one’s perspective.

By sweeping aside decades of legislative restrictions on the role of corporations in political campaigns, ruling that companies can use their treasuries to spend as much as they want to support or oppose individual candidates, the court declared there was no difference between corporations and people.

I recognize not all corporations are the same, but the potential for mischief lies in the larger corporations that already exercise great influence on our political process.

The initial benefactors of the court’s ruling are the incumbents in the House of Representatives and Senate. Incumbency has long been a major advantage for members of Congress.

Because incumbents generally receive more media exposure, have substantial influence over public policy; they usually raise more money to campaign than their opponents.

While there have been exceptions to this rule, few would argue against the advantages inherent to incumbency. Corporations have traditionally contributed based on who’s in power more so than party loyalty. Under the court’s ruling the natural advantages of incumbency would likely increase.

The exception to the incumbency rule might be witnessed in California’s U.S. Senate race between incumbent Barbara Boxer and her Republican challenger. Republicans have already targeted Boxer’s seat as vulnerable, we may be witnessing an already expensive California senate race that breaks all records for campaign spending.

Retired justice, Sandra Day O’Connor opined the courts ruling will create an “arms race” in state and local judicial elections, making an independent judiciary more difficult to achieve. How is this good for the country?

The court’s ruling also opens the door for non-American based corporations to participate in our electoral process. Given the sophisticated methods used to transfer funds, under the Supreme Court’s ruling how can we be certain that money tied to al-Qaida will not infiltrate congressional campaigns? If Congress and President Obama do not act quick to close this gaping loophole, it stands to permanently compromise our democracy.

Those who suggest my concerns are merely sounding the drum of Chicken Little; I call their attention to the dismantling of the Glass Steagall Act.

The Glass Steagall Act became law in 1934, on the heels of the Great Depression. Glass Steagall kept banks from behaving like brokerage houses and insurance companies, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, passed by Congress and signed by Bill Clinton in 1999 loosened those restrictions.

In roughly eight years, Gramm-Leach-Bliley undid what Glass Steagall held together for 65 years. Given the state of the economy, who’s prepared to say dismantling Glass Steagall was good for America?

How long will it take before some enterprising corporate executive abuses the electoral system in ways currently unimaginable? A corporation’s amoral desires to operate in their perceived self interest could lead to immoral consequences for the public.

The court is making the clear statement that the speech of corporations is greater than that of individuals.
I understand the notion of free speech is not a perfect one. Some speech, for obvious reasons, is not free; and the speech of individuals does not exist equally. But I question, the rationale of granting large organizations such as unions, corporations, and even those corporations not based in America the legal cover to have more speech thereby reducing the speech of the individual.

So much for strict constructionism, if Bush v. Gore did not dispel the myth that conservative justices are just as vulnerable to overreach as the charges conservatives frequently made toward their liberal counterparts, this latest ruling should end all debate.

Justice John Paul Stevens in his dissenting argument, accurately sums up the problem for our electoral process going forward:

“The rule announced today — that Congress must treat corporations exactly like human speakers in the political realm — represents a radical change in the law…The court’s decision is at war with the views of generations of Americans.”