The Era of Citizens United Could Be Nearing Its End(jacobin.com)
22 pointsby Tomte7 hours ago4 comments
  • voidfunc7 hours ago
    This won't go anywhere. Too much influence at stake. The court will just decline.
  • atmavatar6 hours ago
    I find the idea that the current Roberts court would issue a ruling reducing corruption a laughable proposition.

    Roberts, Alito, and Thomas were part of the original majority in the Citizens United v. FEC decision, and I have a hard time believing more than one of Barrett, Kavanaugh, or Gorsuch would break ranks in a similar case.

    But perhaps more importantly, several justices on the court have also since been revealed to have accepted undisclosed gifts (i.e., bribes) for decades (Thomas being the largest offender). Worse, the justices failed to recuse themselves from cases involving those who'd provided said gifts. Even worse, once the story broke about the undisclosed gifts, the Roberts court rejected the idea of independent ethics review for the court's members, insisting it could continue to be trusted to police itself despite the revelations of its own corruption.

    The Roberts court is a very pro-corruption court.

    • akramachamarei6 hours ago
      Do you have examples of cases where gift-receiving judges should have recused? I tried looking into Thomas (the biggest news story) and ProPublica is very outright that the gift giver (Harlan Crowe) has not been involved in a Supreme Court case since Thomas was on it. The issue people seem to be focusing on is disclosure, the conversation doesn't seem to be at recusal.
      • cherry_tree5 hours ago
        The Supreme Court rules on things like the chevron doctrine which allows the executive agencies to implement and enforce regulations across all industries. Does Harlan crowe do business in one of “all” industries? There is of course the topic of the article, citizens united which gave Crowe the ability to massively influence politics. Cases in the Supreme Court affect everyone in the country because it defines or redefines the law with every decision. To even begin the train of thought that a billionaire could be unaffected by _all previous supreme court opinions_ is just strange.
        • akramachamareian hour ago
          > To even begin the train of thought that a billionaire could be unaffected by all previous supreme court opinions is just strange.

          Yeah, that is strange. I'm curious why you brought it up.

    • someguydave5 hours ago
      Orange man bad, republicans bad. Thanks for the info
  • jmclnx6 hours ago
    Pretty bad these days the outcome of a court case will depend upon what political party will be put at a disadvantage. Even this article tryed to frame the case as "no political party will be disadvantaged".

    There is no law in the US these days.

  • toss16 hours ago
    Another, probably better method that avoids SCOTUS to overturn Citizen's United is going back to the source — the fact that states create corporations and specify their allowed activities — and amending state corporate-charter law to strip corporations of the enumerated power to spend on elections or ballot issues. AFAIK, bills are already in progress in Montana, Maine, and I just heard about one in Hawaii too.

    If anyone has more info, please post.

    • delichon6 hours ago
      In Citizens United Kennedy held that government can't regulate speech by identity, not just individual or corporate, but by any form of organization. A state cannot evade that decision by revising the form.

      It was already considered unconstitutional to legislate based on the content of speech. Citizens United added the identity of the speaker.

        the worth of speech “does not depend upon the identity of its source, whether corporation, association, union, or individual”  -- https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/558/310/