[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDHfbzogaS4]
We’ve been spreading the word that the Supreme Court is considering a critically important case this fall: Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. The case started out as a pretty technical dispute about the application of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law to the right-wing group Citizens United’s plan to broadcast a movie smearing Hillary Clinton during last year’s presidential elections. After hearing arguments in the case this spring, the Supreme Court upped the ante by asking the parties of the case to come back in September and argue a much broader issue: Whether the court should overrule key precedents and hold that business corporations have unlimited rights to spend as much money as they want on political campaigns.
Around the time the case was argued on Sept. 9, it was the subject of front-page newspaper stories and got a lot of radio and television coverage (including “The Word” on the Colbert Report), as well as the attention of folks in the blogosphere. And the public responded. We’ve heard a tremendous amount of concern by ordinary people who are afraid that their voices will be supplanted by that of big business in our political campaigns, and lots of folks have taken actions to express their support for campaign finance reform (see http://citizenvox.org/2009/09/10/the-dont-get-rolled-roundup/).
But now, a month and a half later the case has dropped off the front pages. Seemingly, nothing has happened. Has the issue gone away? Not a chance. We asked Public Citizen attorney Scott Nelson, a member of the legal team defending the McCain-Feingold law and a former U.S. Supreme Court law clerk, to give us some idea what’s going on.
Q: Scott, can you remind us why this case is so important?
A: For many decades, corporations have been prohibited by federal law from spending their money directly to support or oppose candidates in federal elections. The Supreme Court in previous decisions has upheld the constitutionality of that prohibition because it exists to protect the system from the corrupting influence of massive corporate war chests. Now the court is considering
