The importance of First Amendment political rights has long been an issue that splits across party lines and ideologies. The Supreme Court’s January ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission divided the progressive movement in America.
Prominent liberals ranging from ACLU stalwarts to some labor union attorneys to constitutional litigators like Salon.com’s Glenn Greenwald praised the Court’s ruling as a victory for free speech against government censorship. Most other prominent left-of-center folks, including most elected Democrats, railed against the decision with fury—and they were the loudest and most prominent after Citizens United.
What’s behind this split?
Will Wilkinson explains the dynamic in his most recent column in The Week magazine. An excerpt:
When the Supreme Court overturned campaign finance law in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission last month, civil libertarians and free-speech enthusiasts applauded. The ruling threw out limits on corporate “independent expenditures” on campaign advertising – the case in point being a hatchet-job documentary on Hillary Clinton produced by a non-profit corporation called Citizens United. Government censorship of political documentaries certainly seems to violate the very sinews of the First Amendment. “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech” isn’t very ambiguous, after all.
So I was caught off-guard when MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann called the Citizens United decision “a Supreme Court-sanctioned murder of what little democracy is left in this democracy.” When others followed with similar howls of wounded outrage, I became aware of a gap in my understanding of the progressive Left. I suddenly realized that free speech for big business is to the Left what due process for alleged terrorists is to the Right: an unbearable burden that threatens freedom itself.
For another interesting insight into the doctrinarian divide among the American Constitution Society crowd, listen to a conservation between Harvard Law Professor Larry Lessig and Greenwald with The Young Turks:
