On Dec 25, 6:12*am, Kurt Ullman wrote:
In article ,





*micky wrote:
On Fri, 23 Dec 2011 18:48:05 -0500, Kurt Ullman
wrote:

In article ,
micky wrote:

On the United thing, they overturned 100 year old precedent, giving
free speech rights to a corporation. as if it were a person in that
regard. .
0
*Reread the actual opinion. The majority reinstated a long line of case
law saying that corps had constitutional rights. It had only been in
about the 20 years or so that this was overturned.

Grosjean v. American Press Co., Inc., in 1936 was an early case that
stated specifically that corporations had constitutional rights (under
the 14th amendment's equal protection clause, and the Grosjean Court
specifically included first amendment).
"6. A corporation is a "person" within the meaning of the due process
and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. P. 244."

"From the history of the subject, it is plain that the English rule
restricting freedom of the press to immunity from censorship before
publication was not accepted by the American colonists, and that the
First Amendment was aimed at any form of previous restraint upon printed
publications or their circulation, including restraint by taxation of
newspapers and their advertising, which were well known and odious
methods still used in England when the First Amendment was adopted. P.
245. [p234]
9. The predominant purpose of the grant of immunity was to preserve an
untrammeled press as a vital source of public information. P. 250.

This was reiterated in National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People v. Button in 1963 and Austin v. Mich. Chamber of Comm in
1990. Bellotti reaffirmed the First Amendment principle that the
Government lacks the power to restrict political speech based on the
speaker's corporate identity. 435 U.S., at 784-785.

It wasn't until March of 1990 and AUSTIN V. MICH. CHAMBER OF COMM., 494
U. S. 652, that all of a sudden corps had lost this right. All United
did was reinstute the much longer line that said corporations had
constitutional rights.

I listened to several sources and this is t he first I heard it was
only 20 years old. * The others said 100, iirc.

They said a lot of things.



But anyhow, the original topic was activist court, and neither side
argued this point. *The justice brought it up, *He didn't just decide
actively, but he chose the issue himself, something judges rarely if
ever do, and the majority of them went with it, knowing he had done
that. * I think that is activist.

First of all it wasn't *THE justice*, it was reargued which means a
majority of the Court requested it. Also United at first asked that the
law be declared facially unconstitutional, but the lower Courts both
noted that only the Supremes could over rule their own decisions and
then United dropped it.

"Throughout the litigation, Citizens United has asserted a claim that
the FEC has violated its First Amendment right to free speech. All
concede that this claim is properly before us. And " '[o]nce a federal
claim is properly presented, a party can make any argument in support of
that claim; parties are not limited to the precise arguments they made
below.' " Lebron , supra , at 379 (quoting Yee v. Escondido , 503 U. S.
519, 534 (1992) ; alteration in original). Citizens United's argument
that Austin should be overruled is "not a new claim." Lebron, 513 U. S.,
at 379. Rather, it is--at most--"a new argument to support what has been
[a] consistent claim: that [the FEC] did not accord [Citizens United]
the rights it was obliged to provide by the First Amendment ." Ibid.



Touche!