Privatizing Democracy?
[F]ive right wing Supreme Court judges [in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission] have now guaranteed that big corporations can spend unlimited funds on political advertising in any political election. In an opinion written by Justice Anthony Kennedy and joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas, the Court overruled established precedent and declared dozens of national and state statutes unconstitutional….
The opinion announces and perpetuates a shallow, simplistic understanding of the First Amendment, one that actually undermines one of the most basic purposes of free speech, which is to protect democracy. The nerve of [Kennedy's] argument — that corporations must be treated like real people under the First Amendment — is in my view preposterous. Corporations are legal fictions. They have no opinions of their own to contribute and no rights to participate with equal voice or vote in politics.
Kennedy’s opinion left Americans very little room to protect themselves against this further degradation of their democracy.
Ronald Dworkin, The “Devastating” Decision, New York Review of Books, Vol. LVII, No. 3, February 25, 2010, at 39.
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