BrianGarst.com

That’s the hope following Wednesday’s rehearing of Citizen’s United.  SCOTUSblog paints an optimistic picture for freedom lovers:

Three Justices — Anthony M. Kennedy, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas — have explicitly urged the Court to overturn the two precedents that sustained congressional limits on campaign financing by corporations and labor unions. Kennedy and Thomas only seemed to reinforce that position on Wednesday; Thomas remained silent, but had given no indication earlier of a change of mind.

That lineup has always put the focus, as the Court volunteered to take on new constitutional questions in the Citizens United case, on the Chief Justice and Justice Alito.  While both have been skeptical in the past about campaign finance laws, supporters of such laws had fashioned an array of arguments they hoped would lead Roberts and Alito to shy away from casting their votes to create a majority to free corporations to spend their own treasury money to influence federal elections.  None of those arguments seemed to appeal to either Roberts or Alito.

This is a good opportunity to clear up some misconceptions about free speech.  NPR asks:

The question always is: Who does the First Amendment apply to? Do only individuals have the right of free speech? Or does this right extend to corporations and unions as well?

These are the wrong questions. The First Amendment says:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

NPR (along with the rest of the advocates for government regulation of speech) thinks the First Amendment creates a right to free speech, and that reasoned people can debate its scope, or divine through enlightened discourse just who that creation applies to.  The text does not justify this approach.

The amendment references “the freedom of speech” as a right already in existence – as is the case for all true rights – in the course of restricting government. The Constitution did not create the right, and has no more say as to whom it applies than it does the application of the right to life, or any other right.  These are natural rights that predate the document created to protect them.

Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech.

The restrictions placed on government in the First Amendment leave little room for debate.  What part of “no law” is unclear?

campaign finance Citizens United v. FEC constitution free speech