[aksss]

> “this Supreme Court”

Assuming you mean Citizens United, decided twelve years ago, the Court has had a nearly 50% turnover since then. It was still “the Robert’s Court” but hardly “this Court”. But the current Court would likely hold a majority for same conclusion of CU - that the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, which prohibited any corporation, non-profit organization or labor union from making an "electioneering communication" within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of an election was an unconstitutional limit on free speech.

Not to relitigate it, but it’s not as if collectives of people weren’t making campaign communications prior to BCRA or CU. They traditionally did. If one has an issue with corporate personhood, one has to rewind 100 years and do impact analysis on all that it would mean in practice. Probably a bloodier mess than just prohibiting speech (property rights, taxation, etc).

[jmyeet]

It's still the Roberts Supreme Court. Some of the actors may have changed (eg RBG, Scalia) but do you really think the current makeup of the court would rule otherwise if that case was decided today?

[aksss]

Not just some, 4 of 9 have turned over and Beyer’s replacement pre-appointed, oddly enough. The balance has also shifted. It’s a different Court than it was twelve years ago, and lazy to conflate them regardless of whether you think the result would be the same.

To that point, need I remind that the case was decided unanimously, with five dissenting only in part? Ginsburg, Steven’s, Sotomayor, Beyer, and Thomas had disagreement in how to reach the end result, but signed on for the end result. It’s not hard to understand why:

Fundamentally, the idea of banning a book critical of Hillary Clinton in the run up to an election or primary is a bit hard to swallow as benefitting any but the Hillary Clinton’s of the world.

Evidently, how you rationalize banning it was arguably worse in principle than how you rationalize allowing it.