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POV: Man’s Rights; The Nature of Government
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The Immigration Debate
by The Editors | April 17, 2017
Charlie Hebdo Two Years Later: Will America Continue to Protect Free Speech?
by Steve Simpson | January 07, 2017
Free Speech Is a Right, Not a Political Weapon
by Steve Simpson | December 06, 2016
One Small Step for Dictatorship: The Significance of Donald Trump’s Election
by Onkar Ghate | November 17, 2016
Overturning Citizens United Would Be a Disaster for Free Speech
by Steve Simpson | September 06, 2016
New Book: Defending Free Speech
by The Editors | July 26, 2016
Defending Free Speech
by Steve Simpson | July 02, 2016
How U.S. Attorneys General Are Like Chinese Censors
by Steve Simpson | July 01, 2016
Standing up for Free Speech
by The Editors | June 17, 2016
Is the First Amendment Enough?
by Steve Simpson | March 22, 2016
Free Speech Under Siege
by Steve Simpson | March 25, 2015
Freedom of Speech or Tyranny of Silence?
by The Editors | January 21, 2015
Free Speech and the Battle for Western Culture
by Yaron Brook | January 21, 2015
Freedom of Speech: We Will Not Cower
by Onkar Ghate | January 07, 2015
Gutting the First Amendment
by Steve Simpson | July 17, 2014
The Myth about Ayn Rand and Social Security
by Onkar Ghate | June 19, 2014
The Campaign Finance Monster That Refuses to Die
by Steve Simpson | June 11, 2014
The “End the Debt Draft” Campaign
by Don Watkins | March 18, 2014
End the debt draft
by Don Watkins | March 13, 2014
Abortion Rights Are Pro-life
by Leonard Peikoff | January 23, 2013
A Liberal Ayn Rand?
by Onkar Ghate | November 02, 2012
Ryan, Rand and Rights
by Don Watkins | August 17, 2012
Repairing Lochner’s Reputation: An Adventure In Historical Revisionism
by Tom Bowden | Fall 2011
Why Should Business Leaders Care about Intellectual Property? — Ayn Rand’s Radical Argument
by Adam Mossoff | November 30, 2010
Elena Kagan: Could She Defend the Constitution’s Purpose?
by Tom Bowden | July 20, 2010
Capitalism: Who Needs It — Ayn Rand and the American System
by Yaron Brook | June 09, 2010
Were the Founding Fathers Media Socialists?
by Don Watkins | March 01, 2010
Justice Holmes and the Empty Constitution
by Tom Bowden | Summer 2009
Nationalization Is Theft
by Tom Bowden | November 07, 2008
Supreme Disappointments
by Tom Bowden | November 03, 2008
Deep-Six the Law of the Sea
by Tom Bowden | November 20, 2007
After Ten Years, States Still Resist Assisted Suicide
by Tom Bowden | November 02, 2007
No Right to “Free” Health Care
by Onkar Ghate | June 11, 2007
The Rise and Fall of Property Rights in America
by Adam Mossoff | May 16, 2007
Free Speech and the Danish Cartoons, a Panel Discussion
by Yaron Brook | April 11, 2006
The Fear to Speak Comes to America’s Shores
by Onkar Ghate | April 04, 2006
The Twilight of Freedom of Speech
by Onkar Ghate | February 21, 2006
The Cartoon Jihad: Free Speech in the Balance
by Christian Beenfeldt | February 10, 2006
The Faith-Based Attack on Rational Government
by Tom Bowden | June 27, 2005
Supreme Court Should Uphold Rights, Not Majority Sentiment in Ten Commandments Cases
by Tom Bowden | February 23, 2005
Campaign Finance Reform Attacks Victims of Corruption
by Onkar Ghate | December 26, 2003
Thought Control
by Onkar Ghate | April 22, 2003
A Supreme Court Overview
by Tom Bowden | January 01, 2000
Blacklists Are Not Censorship
by Tom Bowden | March 23, 1999
Health Care Is Not a Right
by Leonard Peikoff | December 11, 1993
The Age of Mediocrity
by Ayn Rand | April 26, 1981
Censorship: Local and Express
by Ayn Rand | October 21, 1973
A Nation’s Unity
by Ayn Rand | October 22, 1972
Of Living Death
by Ayn Rand | December 08, 1968
The Wreckage of the Consensus
by Ayn Rand | April 16, 1967
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Overturning Citizens United Would Be a Disaster for Free Speech

by Steve Simpson | September 06, 2016 | The Hill

With Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton leading in the polls, it seems likely she will get the chance to deliver on her promise to appoint Supreme Court justices who oppose Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the court’s 2010 decision allowing corporations to spend money on political advocacy. As president, Clinton would get to fill Justice Antonin Scalia’s spot, and she might even get the chance to replace the author of Citizens United, Justice Anthony Kennedy, who is 80 years old. Either way, a Clinton presidency would eliminate the conservative majority that produced the decision, opening the door to its reversal.

This is depressing news for anyone who cares about free speech (all the more so because GOP nominee Donald Trump is no better on free speech than Clinton). Citizens United was based on core First Amendment principles: the right to think and speak your mind, to associate with others and to use your own resources to make yourself heard. Overturning it would be a disaster for free speech.

To see why, start with the facts of Citizens United. The law at issue prevented a nonprofit from distributing a film that opposed Clinton when she last ran for president. The government admitted during the case that the law could be applied to books as well. Central to the very idea of free speech is that it protects the right to criticize government. Yet the result of campaign finance laws is to restrict speech precisely because its subject is politics.

That’s unavoidable given the way the laws function. The purpose of campaign finance laws is to limit the amount of money people can spend to influence politics. But because the chief way to influence politics is to speak to voters and candidates, this necessarily means limiting political speech. To speak effectively, people have to spend money — on things like paper and pencils, signs, computers, printing presses, and broadcast facilities. Limit the money people can spend and you limit the speech they produce.

Campaign finance laws also inevitably expand to cover more and more speech. The reason is simple. When the law eliminates one way to influence politics, resourceful individuals find other ways. Limit direct contributions to candidates, and people will buy newspaper ads. Limit those, and they will turn to television, radio, films, books and the internet. Under the campaign finance laws, every new way to speak about politics becomes a “loophole” that must be closed.

It’s no answer to claim that overturning Citizens United would only affect corporations. True, “corporations aren’t people,” as the familiar refrain goes. They are groups of people. When a corporation “speaks,” the individuals who run it are really doing the speaking. They are exercising their right of association, which follows from the right to free speech — if individuals have the right to speak alone, they have the right to speak in groups. The same principle protects the right to speak through many groups, from political parties to public demonstrations.

There’s no logical reason to limit the reach of campaign finance laws to corporations. Any entity that can spend money can spend it to influence politics. Indeed, before Citizens United was decided, supporters of campaign finance laws targeted unincorporated associations such as Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and wealthy individuals who spent their own money on political speech. If Citizens United is overturned, everyone’s political speech will be subject to regulation.

Even the media aren’t safe. Most media entities are corporations, and they certainly spend money to influence politics. The media are currently exempt from campaign finance laws, but that exists at the pleasure of Congress. The idea that Congress would go after the media may sound crazy, but is it any crazier than government restricting films? Trump wants to use the libel laws to silence the press. Is it really farfetched to think politicians would use the campaign finance laws for the same purpose?

Silencing disagreeable speech certainly seems to be a motive of Citizens United’s critics. Clinton has called it “a case about a right-wing attack on me and my campaign.” At the Democratic convention, Marissa Barrow of the Progressive Change Campaign said “Hillary Clinton’s commitment to overturning Citizens United . . . [is] key to improving our chances of victory on every other issue.” Translation: Overturning the case will make it harder for Barrow’s opponents to convince politicians to block her policies.

It’s true that Citizens United led to billions more in political spending. But all of it was spent to produce speech promoting political views. From the standpoint of free speech, that’s a good result, not a bad one. True, much of that money is spent by people who want to feed from the public trough. But freedom to spend money on political speech is not the cause of cronyism any more than freedom of the press is the cause of libel.

Overturning Citizens United won’t eliminate government corruption. But it will allow government to limit our speech — and with it, our right to affect the course of our government.

About The Author

Steve Simpson

Former Director of Legal Studies (2013-2018), Ayn Rand Institute