[EL] MT Sup. Court on Corp. Expenditures

[Richard Winger]

Notice the Justice Baker dissent, in which she quotes Stephen Breyer's fairly new book, "Making our Democracy Work:  a Judge's View."  Breyer's book celebrates that the country accepts U.S. Supreme Court precedents, generally, and people continue to believe that the Court is legitimate.

When Justice Breyer spoke to Hastings Law School in San Francisco in November 2011, the moderator on the stage asked him about Citizens United.  The moderator, a law professor there, probably thought Breyer would criticize the Citizens United decision (Breyer had criticized Bush v Gore).  But Breyer defended the decision (even though, of course, he mentioned that he had dissented) and belittled the critics who say that money and speech are different things.  Breyer said one's speech doesn't get heard if one doesn't have the ability and means to spend money disseminating one's speech.

After I attended that event, I almost wrote about what he had said.  But I hadn't tried to write down exactly what he had said, so I didn't attempt to do that.

Richard Winger

415-922-9779

PO Box 470296, San Francisco Ca 94147

--- On Fri, 12/30/11, Justin Levitt <levittj at lls.edu> wrote:

From: Justin Levitt <levittj at lls.edu>
Subject: Re: [EL] MT Sup. Court on Corp. Expenditures
To: law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
Date: Friday, December 30, 2011, 5:01 PM


  

    
  
  
    I think the opinion link below may be locked behind a firewall of
    some kind.  There's another link to the full opinion here.

    

    Happy New Year!

    

    Justin

    

    -- 
Justin Levitt
Associate Professor of Law
Loyola Law School | Los Angeles
919 Albany St.
Los Angeles, CA  90015
213-736-7417
justin.levitt at lls.edu
ssrn.com/author=698321
    

    

    On 12/30/2011 4:46 PM, James J. Sample wrote:
    
      Rick asked that I send this development to the list.  

Today, the Montana Supreme Court, relying in large part on the state's history of having been at one time, more or less, one very large company town under Anaconda Mining, upheld the state's ban on direct corporate general treasury expenditures for or against political candidates.  The decision, written by Chief Justice Mike McGrath, was 5-2 to uphold the law on grounds of compelling state interests.  The dissenters would have overturned the law on Citizens United grounds and predict that SCOTUS will do just that.  List member Anthony Johnstone, now of the University of Montana and previously the Montana state solicitor, was instrumental in defending the law.  

News article:  http://helenair.com/news/state-and-regional/supreme-court-upholds-state-ban-on-corporation-candidate-spending/article_ba9c41ea-332a-11e1-b7f1-001871e3ce6c.html

Full opinion: http://applicationengine.mt.gov/getContent?vsId={1C0B7886-01C0-49E3-A71A-C06CA7E71040}&impersonate=true&objectStoreName=PROD%20OBJECT%20STORE&objectType=document

Best,
James


James Sample  l  Associate Professor  l  Hofstra Law School
121 Hofstra University, Suite 29J l  516-463-7236  l  james.sample at hofstra.edu

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