[EL] "Six Amendments"

Rick Hasen rhasen at law.uci.edu
Sat Apr 19 20:45:22 PDT 2014 

<http://electionlawblog.org/>


    "Change the Constitution in Six Easy Steps? It Won't Be That Simple,
    Justice Stevens; From campaign finance to political gerrymandering,
    the retired Supreme Court justice skips hard arguments in his new
    book in favor of unrealistic, poorly drafted solutions. "
    <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=60653>

Posted on April 19, 2014 8:43 pm <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=60653>by 
Rick Hasen <http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

I have written this book review 
<http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/20/change-the-constitution-in-six-easy-steps-it-won-t-be-that-simple-justice-stevens.html>for 
/The Daily Beast. /It begins:

    Reading retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens's new book,
    /Six Amendments: How and Why We Should Change the Constitution
    <http://www.amazon.com/Six-Amendments-Should-Change-Constitution-ebook/dp/B00GM0P55M/>/,
    I was reminded of an old Steve Martin routine
    <http://snltranscripts.jt.org/77/77imono.phtml> from his standup
    days. "First, get a million dollars," Martin explains in "You Can Be
    a Millionaire and Never Pay Taxes." Then if the tax collector comes
    to your door asking why you didn't pay taxes on your million
    dollars, just say, "I forgot." Just like Martin, Justice Stevens
    wants to skip all the tough stuff, using his slim volume to offer
    overly simplistic solutions to some of the country's most pressing
    problems, from political gerrymandering to Second Amendment gun
    rights and campaign finance. I'm afraid it will take much more to
    cure our nation's ills.

    Let's consider Justice Stevens's take on campaign finance. The
    Supreme Court has been on a long march toward lifting all campaign
    finance limits, most famously
    <http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2010/01/money_grubbers.html>
    in the /Citizens United <http://www.supremecourt.gov>/ case, which
    freed corporate money from its shackles, and most recently
    <http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2014/04/the_subtle_awfulness_of_the_mccutcheon_v_fec_campaign_finance_decision_the.html>
    in the McCutcheon case (PDF
    <http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/13pdf/12-536_e1pf.pdf>), which
    dropped limits
    <http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/02/the-supreme-court-rules-campaign-limits-are-for-losers.html>
    on the total amount people can donate to federal candidates in a
    two-year period. These cases have all been 5-4, with the five
    conservative justices, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, striking
    down or limiting campaign finance laws and the four liberals, which
    included Justice Stevens when he was still on the court, protesting
    that reasonable campaign finance limits can coexist with the First
    Amendment.

    Mercifully, Justice Stevens assures us that he won't repeat the
    arguments he made in his somewhat meandering and ineffective
    <http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1737938> 86-page
    dissent in /Citizens United/. (He does reveal that Justice David
    Souter told him he too would have joined the /Citizens United/
    dissent had he still been on the court, something consistent with
    earlier leaks
    <http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2012/05/citizens_united_justice_david_souter_s_dissent_in_the_supreme_court_s_momentous_campaign_finance_case_.html>).
    Justice Stevens instead offers 20 or so pages describing the nature
    of the dispute followed by his proposed amendment: "Neither the
    First Amendment nor any other provision of this Constitution shall
    be construed to prohibit the Congress or any state from imposing
    reasonable limits on the amount of money that candidates for public
    office, or their supporters, may spend in elections."

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Court <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=29>

-- 
Rick Hasen
Chancellor's Professor of Law and Political Science
UC Irvine School of Law
401 E. Peltason Dr., Suite 1000
Irvine, CA 92697-8000
949.824.3072 - office
949.824.0495 - fax
rhasen at law.uci.edu
http://www.law.uci.edu/faculty/full-time/hasen/
http://electionlawblog.org

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