On 10/19/10, JBoppjr@aol.com <JBoppjr@aol.com> wrote:
Then do a constitutional amendment, if you dare, rather than thinking that
the Court should just change the First Amendment to your liking or that
Congress can just give the First Amendment the figurative finger. Jim Bopp
Jim, I was thinking your route of convincing only 5 people on the
Supreme Court would be a lighter burden than the burden of a
constitutional amendment which involves convincing the Congress and
3/4 of the states' legislatures. I'm sure this is part of the reason
why you didn't pursue a clarifying amendment some time prior to the
Citizens United ruling in January 2010.
Right now, it's four down, one to go on the Supreme Court, so the
burden of changing just one vote doesn't sound as difficult to me.
Paul Lehto, J.D.
In a message dated 10/19/2010 4:13:22 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
lehto.paul@gmail.com writes:
Jim, putting aside the topic of inalienable rights, Constitutional
rights offer only limited protection against those "temporary
majorities" you indicate they protect "against", simply because there
is no constitutional protection against a supermajority sufficient to
amend the Constitution (e.g., a Congressional supermajority and 3/4 of
the states' legislatures), even if that supermajority is relatively
temporary in duration. In effect, the burden of constitutional
amendment is designed to "make sure" the people are seriously wanting
the change, but is not necessarily to prevent a relatively quick
amendment and ratification if the will to do so is there.
The approximately 80% super-majority opposing the Citizens United
holding is not a "temporary" majority - it reflects or is consistent
with a century or more of opposition to unlimited involvement of “free
money” and/or corporate money in politics.
For example, immediately below is a quote from the final paragraphs of
the Unanimous 1884 US Supreme Court case entitled Ex Parte Yarbrough
(referring initially to the case at bar of violence by Klansmen
against blacks in connection with Southern elections, then equating
that violence with “unprincipled corruptionists” and “the free use of
money in elections”). It's unlikely such strongly worded concepts as
those below would pass the editing pens of all the justices in the
final paragraph of the case without it representing their actual
belief:
“If the recurrence of such acts as these prisoners stand convicted of
are too common in one quarter of the country, and give omen of danger
from lawless violence, the free use of money in elections, arising
from the vast growth of recent wealth in other quarters, presents
equal cause for anxiety.
If the government of the United States has within its constitutional
domain no authority to provide against these evils -- if the very
sources of power may be poisoned by corruption or controlled by
violence and outrage, without legal restraint -- then indeed is the
country in danger, and its best powers, its highest purposes, the
hopes which it inspires, and the love which enshrines it are at the
mercy of the combinations of those who respect no right but brute
force on the one hand, and unprincipled corruptionists on the other.
The rule to show cause in this case is discharged, and the writ of
habeas corpus denied.
Ex Parte Yarbrough, 110 U.S. 651 (1884).”
http://supreme.justia.com/us/110/651/case.html
Paul Lehto, J.D.
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