[EL] Citizens United revisionist history: "banning books"

[Marty Lederman]

Just an aside, to address the oft-repeated canard that "the deputy
solicitor defended government power to *ban books* at the first CU
argument."

Of course Malcolm Stewart said nothing of the sort.  He said that if a
*corporation* wished to publish a book containing express advocacy, the
state could require that such publication *not be subsidized by general
corporate treasury funds*.

On Sun, Oct 11, 2015 at 2:56 PM, Ilya Shapiro <IShapiro at cato.org> wrote:

> But there's no need to balance rights/values here. 200 people spending a
> lot of money on political speech don't inhibit anybody else's right to
> spend money on speech (individually or pooled) or to knock on doors, or to
> otherwise engage in political speech. There's not some zero-sum game with a
> finite amount of speech (or a finite amount of money to spend on it).
>
> Also, three points regarding some mistaken premises (not sure to what
> extent the rest of your argument stands or falls thereby):
>
> 1. Money is speech only insofar as bullhorns, laptops, printing presses,
> wifi, and other tools for facilitating speech are, no more no less. That
> really shouldn't be controversial -- though perhaps, like the deputy
> solicitor who defended govt power to ban books at the first CU argument,
> many people on this list are ok with restricting all those tools if they're
> used "too much" for political speech.
>
> 2. There's not a consensus that money shouldn't be used to allocate
> kidneys. There's a reason there's a shortage of organs and people die on
> waiting lists. And evidence from Iran, of all places, show that kidney
> markets can work rather well.
>
> 3. I'm not sure what "false" allegations about Planned Parenthood you mean
> -- I guess something different/earlier than the current scandal -- but
> surely it's not the government role to be some sort of fact-checker
> regarding public debates. See the Ohio law that was before the Court last
> year (you'll perhaps recall my satirical brief that PJ O'Rourke joined) and
> was struck down on remand.
>
> Ilya Shapiro
>
>
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