The Tester-Murphy Amendment, which Eugene Volokh criticizes here. appears to be virtually identical to last year’s People’s Rights Amendment. I outlined some of the dangers posed by the PRA in this post.
Tag Archives | Citizens United
George Will on the People’s Rights Amendment
By Ilya Somin on May 5, 2012 5:46 pm in Constitutional Amendments, First Amendment, Fourth Amendment, Freedom of Speech
George Will recently published a good Washington Post column on the ill-conceived People’s Rights Amendment, which Eugene Volokh and I blogged about here and here. Will points out several serious flaws in the proposal, and builds on some of the points we made: Controversies can be wonderfully clarified when people follow the logic of illogical […]
Occupy Wall Street and Popular Constitutionalism
By Ilya Somin on January 20, 2012 3:44 pm in Constitutional Law, Constitutional Theory, First Amendment, Freedom of Speech, Popular Constitutionalism
The Occupy Wall Street movement is often seen as a left-wing counterpart to the Tea Party movement. Until recently, however, OWS has differed from the Tea Party in so far as it paid little attention to constitutional issues. By contrast, constitutional issues are a central focus of the Tea Party, which claims that the courts […]
The Chief Beneficiaries of Citizens United?
A CNN article by Jeffrey Toobin asserts, among other things, that The political effect of, if not motivation for, the [Citizens United] decision was clear: Citizens United looks to be a big win for Republicans, who are the likely beneficiaries of the newly lubricated corporate largesse. But is that really so? In California, one of […]
Should People Acting through Corporations be Denied Constitutional Rights Because Corporations are “State-Created Entities”?
One of the standard arguments put forward by critics of the Supreme Court’s decision protecting corporate political speech in Citizens United is that people aren’t entitled to constitutional rights when they use corporate resources because corporations are “state-created entities.” If the state can create an entity, it supposedly also has the power to define its […]
Corporate Rights and Property Rights are Human Rights: Why it’s a Mistake to Conflate a Right with the Means Used to Exercise it
In my last post, I explained why it’s a mistake to deny free speech rights to people organized as corporations on the grounds that corporations aren’t “real people.” It’s true, of course, that a corporation is not a person. But the people who own and operate it are. “Corporate speech” is really just speech by […]
Lessened Corporate First Amendment Rights and Media Corporations
Justice Stevens’ dissent in Citizens United argues that corporations should have sharply reduced First Amendment rights, at least when it comes to speech about political candidates. The obvious response, which the majority makes at length, is that this would leave the government free to impose similar restraints on newspapers, magazines, broadcasters, and others, since nearly […]
People Organized as Corporations are People Too
Others, such as senior Conspirator Eugene Volokh, are much better qualified than I am to comment on today’s important free speech decision striking down restrictions on campaign-related speech by corporations. I want to focus on the common claim that corporations aren’t entitled to free speech rights (and perhaps other constitutional rights) because they aren’t “real […]
New York Times Room for Debate Blog, on the Possible Effects of Citizens United
The blog has posted items from several commentators on this, including one from me.