The real surprise of the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which magnified the ability of corporations to spend money in political campaigns, is how widely disliked the ruling is across the ideological spectrum. After more than a month, the storm set off by the Citizens United ruling is still raging.In one poll released this month, 56 percent of Republicans who voted for Republican candidates in 2008 said they opposed the decision, while only 33 percent favored it. Another poll revealed that almost as many Republicans opposed to the ruling (76 percent) as Democrats (85 percent.)
Fueling the Citizens United storm, it would appear, are the winds of populism. And given the widespread public distaste for bailouts and bonuses, the court’s timing was awkward, to say the least. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and the four others in the majority — Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. — now look like the only friends that corporate America has left. Just when conservatives have finally assembled a dream team of like-minded Supreme Court justices, the court has missed the Tea Party.
Linda Greenhouse, a seasoned analyst of the Supreme Court, writes that the "personhooding" of corporations has been going on for decades -- actually, more than a century. But the Robert-Kennedy- Scalia-Thomas- Alito gang are being assigned the blame by everyone for their recent decision and for a history of judicial infamy. It's good to see. Greenhouse has been moving around the US and talking with people about the "Citizens" decision.
The decision, its visibility enhanced by President Obama’s public rebuke of the court during the State of the Union speech last month, is obviously serving as a wake-up call, prompting many people to pay attention for the first time to those very trends. Clearly, they don’t like what they see. One question is whether disaffection with a particular decision will translate into a more general disaffection with the court itself.
Sure. It has already. The disillusionment with the corporatist Court began even before the Bush v. Gore decision and that was an outlying pro-corporation decision -- and a purely political decision -- if there ever was one. It's just that the political right has finally woken up to the mess its political choices have brought us.
"Disaffection" is just the beginning. If Obama wanted to pack the court right now with less corporatist justices, he'd get plenty of public support, I betcha.
