Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Academic Blogs -> Legal Theory Blog

Academic

: Legal Theory Blog

Garnett on Citizens United

By Lawrence Solum

Rick Garnett has a post on Citizens United on Bench Memos.  Here is a taste:

Blogospheric-commentators' predictions are, to put it mildly, not worth much. That said, one can assert confidently, without any fear of being contradicted or proved mistaken, that the Supreme Court's decision in the Citizens United case will trigger (and has already prompted) a flood of indignant denunciations of "conservative judicial activism."

And:

How should those of us who welcome today's decision ? and, in my view, everyone who is appropriately skeptical toward regulations of political and election-related speech should welcome it ? respond to these charges? Do they hit home?

Yes and no. They do have bite if directed at a "conservative" who purports to believe that federal judges should never invalidate on constitutional grounds acts of Congress or other legislatures. (Just as the "deference"-loving critics who lob the "conservative judicial activism" attack should squirm a bit when trying to defend "liberal" justices' hostility to school-voucher programs or bans on partial-birth-abortion.) But who, really, believes that?

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on January 22, 2010 (boomark / email).