Source: https://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2010-spring/citizens-united/
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 18:28:52+00:00

Document:
The Supreme Court’s recent decision in Citizens United v. FEC is one of the most important First Amendment decisions in a generation and one of the most controversial. In it, the Supreme Court struck down a law that banned corporations from spending their own money on speech that advocated the election or defeat of candidates. In the process, the Court overturned portions of McConnell v. FEC, a case in which the Supreme Court, a mere six years ago, upheld McCain-Feingold, one of the most sweeping restrictions on campaign speech in history.
In many ways, Citizens United is a ringing endorsement of First Amendment rights, and it is certainly cause for optimism about the future of free speech. But the divisions on the Supreme Court over the case and the reactions from Democrats in Congress, the media, and the left in general indicate that Citizens United will not be the last word on the matter.
In this respect, the controversy is not surprising: Citizens United dealt a serious blow to the further growth of campaign finance laws, supporters of which are determined and outspoken. But the controversy is shocking from the standpoint of the law at issue: It prevented a nonprofit group from distributing a film that criticized a candidate, Hillary Clinton, during her run for the presidency in 2008. During oral arguments in the case, the government admitted campaign finance laws could be applied to prevent corporations from publishing and distributing not only films but also books that said the wrong things during election cycles.
The First Amendment states: “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” Those simple and elegant words would seem to leave no room for a law, passed by Congress, that prevents corporations from spending money to distribute films and books. So, how did we get here?
Intellectuals, courts, and commentators have debated which particular “social goals” the First Amendment should serve, but few in the 20th century have disagreed that the First Amendment’s purpose is primarily instrumental. Seen this way, the First Amendment is effectively a blank slate. And in the early and mid-20th century, so-called “progressives” were happy to write their goals onto it.
Led by intellectuals such as John Dewey and Herbert Croly, the progressives actively opposed the limited, constitutional government established by America’s founders.3 Progressives held that the individual’s highest moral purpose is to serve the “greater good” of society. They opposed private property and capitalism, sought to redistribute wealth, and believed that inequalities among citizens justified overriding constitutional limits on government action.4 Because businesses and the wealthy often lobbied and campaigned against the progressives’ efforts, the progressives championed early restrictions on lobbying and campaign spending.
In the modern era, the progressive who most influenced campaign finance laws was John Gardner, the founder of Common Cause.7 Gardner shared the early progressives’ disdain for “special interests,” which he believed were thwarting the progressives’ agenda by using money to influence the political process. “All citizens should have equal access to decisionmaking processes of government, but money makes some citizens more equal than others,”8 Gardner argued. “It isn’t just that money talks. It talks louder and longer and drowns out the citizen’s hoarse whisper.”9 Gardner and Common Cause were instrumental in crafting and passing the first modern campaign finance reform law in the early 1970s,10 which set the tone for much of what would follow.
This egalitarian view of speech is patently contrary to the First Amendment’s protection of the individual’s right to freedom of speech. Egalitarians ignore the obvious fact that individuals are necessarily unequal: Some have more money than others, some are more articulate than others, some are louder and more persistent than others (among countless other differences). If people are left free to speak as they wish—and to pay for the means to do so—some individuals and groups will have a greater impact on elections and thus the policies and actions of government than others. In short, freedom of speech and equality of speech are opposites.
This is the battle at the heart of campaign finance laws. On one side is the view, held (albeit imperfectly) by most challengers of such laws, that the First Amendment protects an individual right to freedom of speech. On the other is the view, held by advocates of campaign finance laws, that the First Amendment protects speech only insofar as it serves, or at least does not thwart, equality of influence over the political process. In the middle is the Supreme Court, which has wavered between these poles, but, unfortunately, has all too often sided with the egalitarians.
The Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United, the latest skirmish in this battle, was a substantial victory for the individual rights interpretation of the First Amendment. To understand the significance of this ruling, we must begin by surveying the most relevant history of campaign finance laws. Then we will turn to the Citizens United decision itself, the controversy it ignited, and what the Court’s ruling means for freedom of speech and the future.
Leaving aside the philosophical premises on which the law was based, FECA posed an immediate practical problem. How do you control the money going into campaigns?
Consider the seemingly simple matter of limiting the contributions individuals make to candidates. FECA allows individuals to contribute no more than $2,400 per year to a given candidate. But what counts as a contribution? Obviously, direct monetary donations count, but what about gifts of goods or services? If cash counts as a contribution, then something cash can buy—office equipment, computers, consulting services, or advertising—must count as well, otherwise donors could easily skirt the laws by donating such goods. If people are prevented from helping candidates they support in one way, they will try others.
Consequently, once enacted, laws such as FECA, which aim to regulate financial support for political campaigns, must continually expand as individuals inevitably find ways around them. Faced with a ban on large direct contributions to candidates, individuals will donate money to political parties. Cut off that option, and they will spend their money on their own speech—perhaps purchasing television or radio ads—that supports the candidate. Prevent them from buying broadcast ads, and they will purchase print ads. Block that avenue, and they will use direct mail, the Internet, or some other means. This is the very phenomenon that led the drafters of FECA to include a restriction on independent expenditures: They anticipated people’s efforts to skirt the spirit of the law by circumventing the letter of the law.
Free-market thinkers have long understood that laws expand in this manner. Regulation begets regulation, either because it creates dislocations in the marketplace that need to be remedied by more regulation or because the subjects of the regulation find ways around the law. Inevitably, the regulators react by closing the loopholes.
Thus, given the existence of campaign finance laws, we have two alternatives: Allow the laws to expand inexorably until they regulate everything that could benefit a candidate or influence an election, or eliminate the laws entirely.
In 1976, faced with these alternatives, the Supreme Court chose a third option: compromise.
Moreover, according to the Court, the government had presented a very good reason to limit contributions: the prevention of quid pro quo corruption. If donors were permitted to give large amounts of money to candidates, the reasoning went, candidates might be tempted to provide special favors in return. And even if no such corruption actually occurred, large contributions to candidates might appear corrupt to the public.20 For the Court, both of these rationales were compelling enough to justify what it viewed as a minor infringement on the freedom of speech.
The problem for the government, however, was that the Court saw its position as a direct attack on political speech and the rights of citizens to advocate the election or defeat of candidates. Despite the Buckley Court’s support for limits on contributions, it was unwilling to uphold a law that so clearly and directly prohibited political speech.22 The Court rejected both of the government’s rationales for limiting independent expenditures and struck down these limits.
Like so much of the Buckley decision, this statement was both promising and frustrating. On this view of the First Amendment, freedom of speech is protected not as an inalienable right of the individual, but as a means to serve a broader “public good”—“the bringing about of social changes desired by the people.” Thus, although the Court made the right decision, it did so for the wrong reason.
Despite some high points, the Court’s decision in Buckley entailed flawed premises and compromised principles that would lead to further infringements on the freedom of speech. Three aspects of the ruling guaranteed this: First, the Court’s distinction between contributions and independent expenditures was impossible to maintain over the long term because both can benefit candidates and thus arguably lead to a quid pro quo. Second, although the Court rejected the egalitarian rationale for campaign finance restrictions, the rationale it accepted—the possibility of quid pro quo—was vague. Third, the Court’s instrumentalist interpretation of the First Amendment left room for restrictions where speech was believed not to further the “public interest.” This was a recipe for disaster.
The Wall Street Journal presciently described Buckley as having created a “half-dead monster” that is “awfully hard to kill, and the more you wound it, the more havoc it will wreak.”25 To see how this monster terrorized free speech for years to come, we need to work in one more piece of the campaign finance puzzle: the treatment of corporate speech.
Since the early 20th century, federal law has severely restricted corporate spending on political speech, first banning direct corporate contributions to candidates and then banning corporate independent expenditures for electoral advocacy. Supporters of the bans have argued both that corporations are artificial persons without First Amendment rights, and that the bans are necessary to promote equality of influence in elections.26 Another motivation for such bans, however, is the supporters’ desire to silence those with whom they disagree.
In Buckley, the Court had defined the corruption in question as the political quid pro quo—an exchange of campaign contributions for political favors. It concluded that avoiding even the “appearance” of such exchanges was sufficient grounds for limiting contributions.31 But the Court never defined the corruption it had in mind any more clearly than this. Corruption, according to the Court, was something less than bribery but more than the effort to influence the actions or judgment of politicians.32 The Court recognized that in a representative form of government, constituents must be permitted to influence politicians’ judgment and their actions, but it felt that at some point that influence went “too far.” Thus, small contributions would be permissible but not large ones. John Doe would be free to send up to $2,400 to his candidate of choice, but Steve Forbes would not be permitted to bankroll Jack Kemp’s run for president. George Soros, however, would be free to spend millions on independent ads supporting his favorite candidate.
The Supreme Court’s notion of “corruption” provided no clear, principled reason for why some of these things were permissible and others were not. The so-called progressives were only too happy to exploit this weakness.
Progressives had always believed that any effort by “special interests” to influence the views or actions of politicians—whether through lobbying, campaign contributions, or simply supporting them with independent speech—would lead to unequal influence and was therefore inherently corrupt. Although in Buckley the Court had rejected the more openly egalitarian rationale for limiting campaign financing, its vague notion of “corruption”—which accepted the progressives’ basic premise that something was improper about people spending money to support candidates for office—left the back door open for the egalitarian rationale in the future. In Austin, the chickens came home to roost.
In 1973, John Gardner formulated the egalitarian mantra that money made some interests “more equal” than others and threatened to give certain “special interests” disproportionate influence over the political process by “drown[ing] out” the voices of ordinary citizens. Roughly twenty years later, this mantra was substantially accepted by the Supreme Court.
Austin set a precedent that virtually guaranteed the steady growth of campaign finance laws at the expense of political speech. The Supreme Court had held, in essence, that the greater one’s resources, the greater the constitutional justification for regulating one’s ability to affect politics and the outcome of elections. The protections the Court had extended to political speech in Buckley were looking less and less justified every day. If an individual may make only small donations directly to a candidate, and if a corporation may not make any donations or independent expenditures at all, why should individuals be permitted to spend unlimited amounts advocating the election or defeat of a candidate?
After Austin, this distinction became especially important to corporations, because although Austin prohibited them from spending money on express advocacy, it left them free to spend money on issue advocacy.
Just as predictably, politicians and others who supported campaign finance laws began to complain. The Supreme Court had said in Austin that corporations cannot use their wealth to influence elections, but, according to these complaints, corporations were able to do so after Austin by means of issue advocacy rather than express advocacy. This loophole, argued supporters of the laws, enables “special interest” money to corrupt officeholders and tilt the playing field in favor of the wealthy. If we are to eliminate corruption in politics, they concluded, this and other loopholes must be closed.
Twelve years after Austin, they got their wish.
In March 2002, President Bush signed McCain-Feingold into law. It was immediately challenged in court as a violation of the First Amendment. Most observers, including, reportedly, President Bush himself, thought the Supreme Court would strike down the law. In December 2003, however, the Court, in a 5–4 decision, upheld every major provision of the law, including the ban on electioneering communications.
Supporters of campaign finance laws were ecstatic. Their dream of a law that corrected problems they believed had existed since Buckley had come true. The decision, McConnell v. FEC,44 was widely regarded at the time to be the most important campaign finance decision since Buckley. And, indeed, to uphold a law that regulated political speech more extensively than any law Congress had passed to date, the Court had to break new constitutional ground. It did so primarily by developing a new rationale for upholding campaign finance laws under the First Amendment.
This was entirely logical given the premises of campaign finance law. Buckley implicitly conceded something was wrong with people using money to support candidates or advocate policies. The Court’s reasons—inherent in its view of “corruption”—were vague, but there was no mistaking the conclusion that campaign financing is, in some sense, illegitimate. In Austin, that implicit premise was made more explicit in the Court’s adoption of an egalitarian rationale for limiting corporate spending, which allowed even more limits than Buckley had approved. However, those seeking to influence elections were still finding entirely legal ways around the laws. Thus, according to those opposed to such influence, if the goal is to prevent money from infecting politics, the government must be given the constitutional authority to close loopholes as they arise.
On one level, the implications of the Court’s holding in McConnell are astounding. Corporations had been expressing themselves through issue advocacy because the Supreme Court had permitted the government to regulate express advocacy, allegedly on the grounds that express advocacy was not protected by the First Amendment but issue advocacy was. In other words, corporations were doing what the Supreme Court had said the First Amendment expressly protected their right to do. Yet here was the Supreme Court in McConnell holding that the government could now ban a form of issue advocacy—electioneering communications—precisely because corporations were using it in accordance with that right.
On another level, McConnell’s holding was entirely predictable. As Ayn Rand observed: “In any conflict between two men (or two groups) who hold the same basic principles, it is the more consistent one who wins.”47 The Court had long accepted the basic principles underlying campaign finance laws. On the instrumentalist interpretation of the First Amendment, freedom of speech is not an individual right, but, rather, as Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer puts it, a means to “encourage the exchange of information and ideas necessary for citizens themselves to shape that public opinion which is the final source of government in a democratic state” and to maintain a government “open to participation . . . by all citizens, without exception.”48 And on the egalitarian view of the First Amendment, the state should, quoting Justice Breyer again, “seek to democratize [i.e., equalize] the influence that money can bring to bear upon the electoral process.”49 The only way to equalize people’s ability to speak is to outlaw the means by which some can speak more readily than others. That is what the government, with the blessing of the Court, has proceeded to do.
When Citizens United v. FEC reached the Supreme Court, most observers thought the Court would rule relatively narrowly. Chief Justice John Roberts was generally regarded as a “judicial minimalist” who placed great importance on precedent and Congress’s authority and who favored narrow rulings over broad pronouncements. Justice Samuel Alito, also relatively new to the Court, was a less-known commodity, but both he and Justice Roberts had voted to create a narrow exemption to the electioneering communications ban in an earlier case rather than to rule the entire law unconstitutional. But the Court surprised practically everyone: Its decision went far beyond what anyone had expected early in the case.
Perhaps fed up with the mind-numbing complexity of the campaign finance laws, perhaps concerned by the fact that they were now being used to prevent the distribution of a film, perhaps shocked by the government’s admission that the laws could also apply to the publication of books, five justices in Citizens United acted to repair some of the damage that had been done to the First Amendment.
Ruling that individuals may not be deprived of freedom of speech simply because they adopt the corporate form, the Court struck down the electioneering communications ban in its entirety. Along with it went the portion of McConnell that had upheld the ban as well as the entire Austin decision, which had provided the constitutional justification for regulating corporate independent expenditures in the first place. In reversing these cases, the Court effectively tossed out speech-squelching laws that had been on the books in one form or another since 1947.
On the core question of whether the ban on corporate spending for independent electoral advocacy violated the First Amendment, Citizens United is a model of principled jurisprudence and common sense. The Court recognized that speaking out in today’s world often requires large expenditures of money, so a ban on corporate independent expenditures amounts to an outright ban on speech.
Citizens United is an astoundingly good decision, especially when compared to the decisions preceding it. It is not just a good campaign finance decision; it is one of the best First Amendment decisions the Supreme Court has ever issued.
But it is not without its flaws.
Most notably, in this regard, the Court maintained the basic framework for analyzing campaign finance laws established in Buckley, according to which the government may limit campaign financing, and thus the speech it produces, by showing that its limits serve the purpose of preventing quid pro quo corruption. More fundamentally, by failing to reject the instrumentalist interpretation of the First Ammendment, the Court failed to challenge the idea that the First Amendment means anything other than what it says: “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press” (emphasis added).
Thus, although the Court emphasized, perhaps more than in any other decision, the fact that the First Amendment protects an individual right, the instrumentalist approach to the amendment remains part of the law. Indeed, as indicated by the caustic reaction to this decision from the left, Citizens United has not settled the debate over the individualist vs. instrumentalist interpretation.
What explains this near hysteria over Citizens United?
Clearly, the outrage over Citizens United has little to do with the nature of corporations or “judicial activism.” Instead, it represents a fundamental philosophical dispute about the nature and meaning of the First Amendment and its role not only in elections but in our entire system of government. So-called progressives, who are the primary champions of campaign finance laws, oppose individual rights, capitalism, and the constitutional system that protects or makes these values possible; thus they want to expand the size and scope of government. Freedom of speech—especially when combined with wealth that enables people and corporations to speak their minds effectively—stands in their way.
Citizens United is a truly radical decision, in that it returns to the constitutional principle that the government must protect and not violate freedom of speech. Unfortunately, because few people understand the moral foundation of free speech—namely, the principle that each individual morally must be left free to speak his own mind for his own sake because each individual morally should act on his own judgment for his own sake—freedom of speech remains not only vulnerable but in severe danger. Until the First Amendment is interpreted in a manner consistent with the purpose of government envisioned by the founders—that is, to protect the rights of individuals to act on their own judgment regardless of what others think or feel about it—the battle over free speech will continue.
Steve Simpson is a writer for the Ayn Rand Institute and a former senior attorney at the Institute for Justice in Arlington, Virginia. He litigated campaign finance and other First Amendment cases nationwide. He was lead counsel in SpeechNow.org v. FEC, a challenge to federal campaign finance laws, and Sampson v. Buescher, a challenge to Colorado's ballot issue campaign finance laws. Mr. Simpson has authored numerous Supreme Court amicus briefs in a wide variety of cases and has spoken and written widely on campaign finance and other issues. Before joining the Institute for Justice, he spent five years as a litigator with the international law firm Shearman & Sterling and two years clerking in the Federal District Court for the Southern District of Florida. Mr. Simpson is a graduate of New York Law School and a member of the bars of New York, New Jersey, and the District of Columbia.
Acknowledgment: The author would like to thank Craig Biddle for his helpful edits and suggestions on this article.
1 Calvin R. Massey, “The Influence of the Foundational Paradigms of Individualism, Pluralism, and Cultural Authoritarianism upon Freedom of Expression,” in Speaking Freely: The Case Against Speech Codes, edited by Henry Mark Holzer (Studio City, CA: Second Thoughts Books, 1994), pp. 46–60.
2 Massey, “Foundational Paradigms,” pp. 46–60.
3 John Samples, The Fallacy of Campaign Finance Reform (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), pp. 43–48; Richard A. Epstein, How Progressives Rewrote the Constitution (Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, 2006), pp. 7–9.
4 Samples, Fallacy of Reform, pp. 43–48, 55; Epstein, How Progressives Rewrote the Constitution, pp. 7–8.
5 Samples, Fallacy of Reform, p. 55; Epstein, How Progressives Rewrote the Constitution, pp. 7–8.
6 Samples, Fallacy of Reform, pp. 50, 54–55.
7 Samples, Fallacy of Reform, pp. 59–64.
8 John Gardner, In Common Cause: Citizen Action and How it Works, quoted in Samples, Fallacy of Reform, p. 62.
9 Samples, Fallacy of Reform, p. 62.
10 John Gardner: Uncommon American, available at http://www.pbs.org/johngardner/chapters/6.html.
11 Owen Fiss, The Irony of Free Speech (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), p. 4 (emphasis added).
12 Anthony Corrado et al., The New Campaign Finance Sourcebook (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2005), pp. 20–22.
13 Corrado et al., Campaign Finance Sourcebook, pp. 21–23.
14 Corrado et al., Campaign Finance Sourcebook, p. 23.
15 Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1 (1976) (emphasis added).
16 Buckley, 424 U.S. at 11.
17 Buckley, 424 U.S. at 19 n. 18.
18 Buckley, 424 U.S. at 19.
19 Buckley, 424 U.S. at 20–22.
20 Buckley, 424 U.S. at 26–29.
21 Buckley, 424 U.S. at 48–49.
22 Buckley, 424 U.S. at 47–48.
23 Buckley, 424 U.S. at 45–47.
24 Buckley, 424 U.S. at 48–49.
25 “The Half-Dead Monster,” Wall Street Journal, February 2, 1976.
26 Samples, Fallacy of Reform, p. 45.
27 Bradley A. Smith, Unfree Speech: The Folly of Campaign Finance Reform (Princeton: Princeton University Press 2001), p. 23.
28 Bradley Smith, “The Myth of Campaign Finance Reform,” National Affairs, no. 2, Winter 2010. Like the federal bans on corporate campaign spending, state bans were also motivated in part by a desire to prevent political outcomes corporations supported. See Smith, Unfree Speech, p. 23.
29 Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, 494 U.S. 660 (1990).
30 Austin, 494 U.S. at 656.
31 Buckley, 424 U.S. at 26–27.
32 Buckley, 424 U.S. at 27–28. See also Nixon v. Shrink Mo. Gov’t Pac, 528 U.S. 377, 389 (2000).
33 Austin, 494 U.S. at 658 (internal citations and quotation marks omitted).
34 Austin, 494 U.S. at 661.
35 Austin, 494 U.S. at 659.
36 Austin, 494 U.S. at 660.
37 Buckley, 424 U.S. at 42–44.
38 Corrado et al., Campaign Finance Sourcebook, pp. 37–39.
39 Samples, Fallacy of Reform, p. 3.
40 Samples, Fallacy of Reform, p. 3.
41 Corrado et al., Campaign Finance Sourcebook, pp. 37–39.
42 Corrado et al., Campaign Finance Sourcebook, p. 42.
43 Senator John McCain, 107th Cong., 1st Sess., Congressional Record (2001), 147:S3116.
44 McConnell v. FEC, 540 U.S. 93 (2003).
45 McConnell v. FEC, 540 U.S. at 136–137, 143–145.
46 McConnell v. FEC, 540 U.S. at 193–194.
47 Ayn Rand, “The Anatomy of Compromise,” in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (New York: Signet, 1967), p. 145.
48 Stephen Breyer, Active Liberty: Interpreting Our Democratic Constitution (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), p. 47 (internal quotation marks omitted).
49 Breyer, Active Liberty, p. 47.
50 Citizens United, slip op. at 18.
51 Citizens United, slip op. at 2–4.
52 Citizens United, slip op. at 18.
53 Citizens United, slip op. at 7, 19.
54 Citizens United, slip op. at 9–10.
55 Citizens United, slip op. at 18.
56 Citizens United, slip op. at 33, 35–37.
57 James Madison, “Virginia Resolutions Against the Alien and Sedition Acts,” (December 21, 1798), reprinted in James Madison Writings (Jack N. Rakove, ed., 1999), p. 590.
58 Citizens United, slip op. at 23.
59 Citizens United, slip op. at 23.
60 Citizens United, slip op. at 40.
61 Citizens United, slip op. at 23.
62 Citizens United, slip op. at 45.
63 Citizens United, slip op. at 38 (internal citations and quotation marks omitted).
64 Citizens United, slip op. at 25–28.
65 Citizens United, slip op. at 39.
66 Citizens United, slip op. at 43.
67 Citizens United, slip op. at 44.
68 Citizens United, slip op. at 33.
69 “GOP Doesn’t Run 2010 Census, But Hopes to Count Your Money,” Post Standard (Syracuse, NY), January 24, 2010, p. A9.
70 President Barack Obama, State of the Union Address, January 27, 2010.
71 “The Court’s Blow to Democracy,” New York Times, January 21, 2010.
72 Countdown with Keith Olbermann (MSNBC television broadcast January 21, 2010), available at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/ns/msnbc_tv-countdown_with_keith_olbermann#34984984.
73 Brown v. Bd. of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1952).
74 Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003).
75 Indeed, many of Citizens United’s harshest critics—including Justice Stevens, who wrote the dissent—have long advocated overturning the portions of Buckley that rejected limits on independent expenditures. See Randall v. Sorrell, 126 S.Ct. 2479, 2506 (2006) (Stevens, J., dissenting). These critics can hardly complain about the majority overturning campaign finance decisions when they wish to do the same to achieve precisely the opposite result.
76 Brief for the Federal Election Commission, p. 43, SpeechNow.org v. FEC, No. 09-5342 (D.C. Cir. Dec. 15, 2009).
77 Smith, Unfree Speech, p. 23; Myth of Campaign Finance Reform.
78 Samples, Fallacy of Reform, pp. 62–63.
79 Samples, Fallacy of Reform, pp. 3–7, 36.

References: v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v.