Citizen's United
From Zanecorpwiki
I'm unequivocal in my belief that Citizen's United was a bad decision as a matter of law. It puts us in a bad frame politically and will have very negative policy consequences as well, but that's not something I can hold against the Court.
It also gives lie to the Originalist[notes 1] doctrine that supposedly drives Scalia and others as no stretch of the imagination or abuse of original sources can give credence to the idea that either the Founders or the citizens at the time of ratification would have considered corporations to have the right to make unlimited campaign contributions.
I do have to say, however, that the early fears, shared by myself, that this augured for a wave of corporatist rulings were while well founded thankfully not borne out. The AT&T ruling stands in stark contrast to Citizen's. While Edward's humorous opinion in AT&T that attacks the conflation of "person" and "personal" as inane is well received by this commentator, it's also quite confusing. While I agree on the point, you could use the same reasoning to argue against the Citizen's ruling. For just as no one confuses "squirrelly" for meaning "someone that looks like a squirrel"[notes 2] neither does anyone confuse a corporation with a person. While true that as a legal matter, "person" is often defined to appropriately include corporations, that is a modern term of art and must be explicitly stated. There was no such intent or definition in the Bill of Rights.
Didn't mean to get drawn into my critique again just yet. The Robert-Scalia court is seems committed to free speech on broad libertarian principals and I applaud this. (Though I still think they got it wrong in the dog fighting case. There are truths, but very few absolutes. There are strong arguments for the dog fighting decision--and I'm happy to support the ACLU to make those arguments. I agree with the arguments, I just don't think they carry the day.)
