5 ms·

It may be the norm, but they also get some completely wrong: Citizens United, for example.

• Redoubts 6y ago
  What if it's right, but the constitution is wrong?
  • huffmsa 6y ago
    Then you follow the procedure outlined in article 5 to amend the Constitution.
    • DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
      That is much easier said than done. It’s 2020 and we still don’t have a gender equality amendment even though the majority of states want one. ...let alone amendments for healthcare as a right, abortion rights, and proportional representation.
      • gowld 6y ago
        Are gender equality laws prohibited by the Constitution? Title IX shows no.
        • DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
          The issue isn’t that there’s a difficulty in creating gender-equality laws, but that the opposite is true: it’s just as straightforward for a legislature somewhere to enact misogynistic laws. A constitutional amendment to recognise gender equality would mean US laws like these could be struck-down or never get enacted in the first place: https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/sexist-laws-in-the-us-in-2017/ https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/sexist-laws-in-the-...
      • huffmsa 6y ago
        It's supposed to be hard. That's the point. You have to get an absolutely overwhelming majority before you can change a the source code.
    • harimau777 6y ago
      At this point that's effectively impossible. To the point where I don't think that's really a viable solution to America's problems.
• rayiner 6y ago
  Citizens United was obviously correct. (While it’s not dispositive, look up which side the ACLU supported in that case.)
  • ulkesh 6y ago
    The enormous amount of money now in politics clearly shows just how wrong it was. The ACLU isn’t always right, either.
    • icebraining 6y ago
      The ACLU has the weird conviction that principles, not just results, matter.
    • bhupy 6y ago
      First of all, the outcome doesn't speak to the Constitutionality. Maybe the Constitution, as is, doesn't produce the outcomes we want, and Article V lays out a process to amend the Constitution. The outcome of a SCOTUS decision is "wrong" insofar as it incorrectly determines the legality of something, not whether or not it produces politically unfavorable outcomes. Second of all, in practice, the influence of money in politics is overstated. Hillary Clinton outspent[1][2] Donald Trump by 2x in the 2016 election, and still lost. In fact, she had far more corporate backing[3][4] than Donald Trump, and still lost. In the 2020 Democratic Primaries, Michael Bloomberg spent $1 billion[5] (!!) on his campaign, and won just 9.4% of the popular vote (1.38% of pledged delegates). Tom Steyer (a no-name billionaire), spent $343 million[6] on his election, and won a humiliating 0.38% of the popular vote (0% of pledged delegates). Interestingly, you would think he would have at least 1/3 of Bloomberg's vote, which suggests that the vast majority of the variance in Bloomberg's vote share can be attributed to his existing name recognition as a famous businessman/politician. Bernie Sanders spent $195 million[7] on his election, having spent less than Bloomberg + Steyer and while having handily beaten both. Joe Biden spent $105 million[8] on his campaign, less than Bernie, and still beat him by 3 million votes. Elizabeth Warren spent $121.31 million[9] on her campaign, and also handily beat Bloomberg + Steyer while having spent far less than them, while losing to Biden while having spent more than him. Those are just the anecdotes (of which there are many more). Decades of research[10] suggest that money probably isn’t the deciding factor in who wins a general election, and especially not for incumbents. Most of the research in the last century found[11] that spending didn’t affect wins for incumbents and that the impact for challengers was unclear[12]. Even the studies[13] that showed spending having the biggest effect, like one that found a more than 6 percent increase in vote share for incumbents, didn’t demonstrate that money actually causes wins. In fact, those gains from spending likely translate to less of an advantage today, in a time period where voters are more stridently partisan. There are probably fewer and fewer people who are going to change their vote because they liked your ad. So this argument is dubious both legally as well as prescriptively. [1] https://www.opensecrets.org/pres16/candidate?id=n00000019 https://www.opensecrets.org/pres16/candidate?id=n00000019 [2] https://www.opensecrets.org/pres16/candidate?id=n00023864 https://www.opensecrets.org/pres16/candidate?id=n00023864 [3] https://www.opensecrets.org/pres16/contributors?id=n00000019 https://www.opensecrets.org/pres16/contributors?id=n00000019 [4] https://www.opensecrets.org/pres16/contributors?id=n00023864 https://www.opensecrets.org/pres16/contributors?id=n00023864 [5] https://www.opensecrets.org/2020-presidential-race/candidate?id=N00029349 https://www.opensecrets.org/2020-presidential-race/candidate... [6] https://www.opensecrets.org/2020-presidential-race/candidate?id=N00044966 https://www.opensecrets.org/2020-presidential-race/candidate... [7] https://www.opensecrets.org/2020-presidential-race/candidate?id=N00000528 https://www.opensecrets.org/2020-presidential-race/candidate... [8] https://www.opensecrets.org/2020-presidential-race/candidate?id=N00001669 https://www.opensecrets.org/2020-presidential-race/candidate... [9] https://www.opensecrets.org/2020-presidential-race/candidate?id=N00033492 https://www.opensecrets.org/2020-presidential-race/candidate... [10] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2605401 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2605401 [11] http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0002764203260415 http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0002764203260415 [12] https://www.jstor.org/stable/2138764?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents https://www.jstor.org/stable/2138764?seq=1#metadata_info_tab... [13] http://www.sas.rochester.edu/psc/clarke/214/Gerber98.pdf http://www.sas.rochester.edu/psc/clarke/214/Gerber98.pdf
• bpodgursky 6y ago
  Whether you agree with or disagree with the Citizens United outcome, describing the majority opinion as a straightforward "completely wrong" (when, for example, the ACLU supported the verdict) indicates that you have not, in fact, read any of the opinions or dissents, or done research about the specific case that was being litigated.
  • Retric 6y ago
    They overturned an at the time recent Supreme Court verdict, which is disruptive and counter to long standing precedent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austin_v._Michigan_Chamber_of_Commerce https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austin_v._Michigan_Chamber_of_...
    • MiroF 6y ago
      > precedent and just because precedent is overturned doesn't mean it is wrong. I don't like Citizens United as much as the next person, but I think this requires a constitution change.
    • rayiner 6y ago
      That doesn’t make a decision “wrong.” Lots of Supreme Court opinions are wrong, and often obviously so. There is nothing wrong with overruling them. Citizens United was an instance of the government sliding down a slippery slope of precedent, which forced that precedent to be re-evaluated. The facts (the government attempting to punish someone for distributing a political movie about a political candidate) were so stark, they revealed the defects in the precedent that may have been obscured previously. Moreover, the government made clear at oral argument that there was no limiting principle to its position—it acknowledged that, had the Court ruled the other way, nothing stopped the government from book banning and other core free speech violations.
      • SilasX 6y ago
        Well said (about the dynamics of why a precedent would be reversed) ... and welcome back.