‘People’s Rights Amendment’: a wrong turn or a campaign finance fix?

Jun 8 2012

‘People’s Rights Amendment’: a wrong turn or a campaign finance fix?

The U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission didn’t please people interested in trying to reign in election campaign spending and tactics.

In that case, the court by a 5-4 vote ruled in part that the First Amendment prohibits limiting corporate funding of independent political broadcasts in candidate elections.

Part of that ruling hinged on the majority equating an individual’s “free speech” to a group’s and equating speech as a form of expression to money as a form of expression.

So, some lawmakers scramble to find a “constitutional” way to orchestrate a law that can engineer campaign finance restrictions.

And others look to rewrite the Constitution to do the same thing, as was the case when multiple court rulings struck down flag desecration laws.

This go around we have the “People’s Rights Amendment,” which basically would make the rights guaranteed by the Constitution only apply to individuals, not groups.

It’s a crafty idea, and a bad one, and I suspect that its political pandering power will generate a lot more attention than its chances of actually altering the highest law of the land.

However, it does cause a conundrum for evokers of the Constitution, especially the First Amendment — and that includes me.

I must bite the bullet a lot when it comes to defending the bad that comes with the good of the First Amendment. And I have written in the past about the election process and how spending related to it — billions of dollars — creates an environment that makes it even more difficult for the well meaning to get into office, to mitigate partisan bickering and to shift elected officials back to public service rather than private gain.

But I remain very suspicious when someone suggests that Americans just “fix” the Constitution every time he or she disagrees with a Supreme Court ruling — especially with the First Amendment.

Free speech is free speech, whether uttered by an individual or a group of like-minded individuals.

Certainly the backers of this proposed amendment have a right to put it out there. But as I tell my students all the time, what we have a right to do and what is right to do is not always the same thing.

Resources:

Filed Under:

Add a Comment »

iCitizenForum

‘People’s Rights Amendment’: a wrong turn or a campaign finance fix?

Post new comment

Blog Archives