pudge's Journal: Justice I'm-Not-An-Activist-But-Really-I-Am Breyer

Stephen Breyer, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, was on Fox News Sunday today. He was giving an example of how sometimes the law is not entirely clear.

He was defending the court's 2003 decision to uphold the campaign finance law that abridged freedom of speech by saying, essentially, that the First Amendment exists, in part, "to help our country ... run fair and free elections. ... And that may mean in part that you don't one person's speech -- that one $20 million giver -- to drown out everybody else's. So if we want to give a chance to the people who have only one dollar and not 20 million, maybe we have to do something to majke that playing field a little more level in terms of money. If you accept that at all, you've suddenly bought into the proposition that there are First Amendment issues on both sides of this equation."

Um. Uh. No. On one side of the equation, you are saying Congress should not limit the speech of others. On the other, you are saying Congress should.

The $20 million giver is not Congress. His "drowning out" of everybody else is not unconstitutional. Congress saying that he may not spend $20 million is unconstitutional.

He dismissed such claims as appealing to "slogans," like "the freedom of speech." Funny, I call that a "law" not a "slogan."

Have I mentioned recently that I really don't respect Justice Breyer's judicial philosophy?

His 'argument' about the interweb . . .

[GMontag]

I seem to recall part of his 'argument' was that the founders did not anticipate the internet and that, somehow, this lets people with $20 million have a biger voice.

Too bad a couple of facts get in the way of that fable.

Firstly, they may not have anticipated the interweb, but they sure had experience with newspapers. Highly partasian, rich politician owned newspapers and some high barriers to entry.

Secondly, the barrier to entry to the interweb is about as close to zero as you can get and approaching zero

Re:

[pudge]

I seem to recall part of his 'argument' was that the founders did not anticipate the internet and that, somehow, this lets people with $20 million have a biger voice.

I think those were two separate things. He talked about how the Founders did not anticipate the Internet, and THEN Wallace asked him about the campaign finance laws, where he went on to talk about what I quoted.

Firstly, they may not have anticipated the interweb, but they sure had experience with newspapers. Highly partasian, rich politician owned newspapers and some high barriers to entry.

Yes, even if we are going to say that we should interpret the Founders in today's context and ignore the language actually used (or at least consider it mitigatable), the newspapers of their day had a few rich voices drowning out everyone else, too.

However, the problem is that he considers it reas

Question

[mgessner]

If the founders realized that it was possible for really wealthy people to exert undue influence over the political process, I wonder why didn't they establish some means to protect the country from this?

Personally, if there was a way to limit corporations from affecting the government the way they do, I'd be all for it. While very difficult to implement, if there was some way to prevent a corporation from giving money to a politician, I'd love it. Certainly I realize that they'd get around it by having i