A partisan Supreme Court (Rutten | LAT)

[struggle4progress]

The decision on campaign finance points to something more troubling than unlimited corporate contributions.
By Tim Rutten
January 23, 2010

... We're all familiar, of course, with the disenfranchisement of corporate America. It's common knowledge that the interests of big business are routinely ignored at every level of society, and that the deprivation of rights suffered by those unfortunates who populate its executive suites is a continuing affront to the national conscience. That, at least, was the suggestion of the strident tone taken by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. "If the 1st Amendment has any force," he wrote, "it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens or associations of citizens for simply engaging in political speech" ...

... The predictable effect on parties is particularly odd from this court, given that one of the most distressing things about this decision -- considered in a sequence stretching back to Bush vs. Gore -- is that it demonstrates that this is a partisan court, willing to hand down sweeping decisions that ignore decades of jurisprudence based on five Republican votes.

That was not true of the activist court over which Chief Justice Earl Warren presided. At the time he was sworn in, Warren was the only member of the court appointed by a Republican president. Still, he inherited a group of justices deeply split over the overriding question of the day -- segregation -- and fashioned a unanimous rejection of legalized racial separation in the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education decision. As The Times' Jim Newton -- Warren's biographer (and also my editor) -- has pointed out, "Before Fred Vinson, Warren's predecessor, died, the court was deeply split over Brown. At least three justices (Tom Clark, Stanley Reed and Vinson) were inclined to uphold Plessy vs. Ferguson in defense of segregation, and two others (Felix Frankfurter and Robert Jackson) were stymied by the question of how to overturn such a long-standing precedent. Vinson's death, which Frankfurter referred to as his first solid evidence of the existence of God, cleared the way for that impasse to be broken. Thus Warren achieved a unanimity that elevated the opinion above partisan or sectional politics." Can that be said of any major decision handed down by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.'s court? ...

Our current ability to predict Supreme Court decisions by weighing the issues against the two parties' programs is worse than melancholy. It marks a new low in our nation's descent into corrosive partisanship.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-rutten23-2010jan23,0,3800098.column

[maglatinavi]

1. USC

Amen!!! :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry:

[bemildred]

2. An excellent piece by Mr Rutten.

I was particlarly taken by part of what you excerpted:

That's hardly the end of this decision's implications. Over time, it's bound to provide the rationale for overturning state and local electoral regulations based on federal law -- as those in Los Angeles are -- and will further undermine the influence of the parties at a time when U.S. politics seem increasingly chaotic.

That's true because, though corporate contributions to the parties continue to be regulated, expenditures made outside the parties on behalf of candidates now are unlimited.

I would predict that there will be some response from the Legislature(s), or at least an attempt at it, on those grounds alone. This is a gift to mass media, which can now suck up unlimited amounts of campaign cash, and an attack on the current two-party system, since it shifts power away from the party elites, who become yet more dependent on the moneybags. We may finally have arrived at a stage where there will be real disharmony among our ruling elites. We may well see a real fight over who runs the country out of this.

[DeepModem Mom]

3. K&R

[Demeter]

4. It's Plain Old Corruption--Not Partisanship

[Hekate]

5. KnR