[BobaFloutist]

Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has been systematically attacking all attempts to limit private campaign finance, including public funding.

In 2011, in Arizona Free Enterprise v. Bennett, they ruled that a program that Arizona established which would give campaigns that opted out of private financing public financing matching their competitors financing infringed on the First Amendment speech rights of the privately financed campaign.

That's right, matching private campaign spending with public funding violates the free speech of the privately funded campaign, because it removes their advantage.

The solution to campaign finance needs to start and end with court reform, or it's DOA.

[giantg2]

Exactly what reforms do you want? If you want first amendment restrictions you can look into passing another amendment. That's really how that's supposed to work. The logic behind the ruling is fine if you actually dig into it - funding is speech, government funding of some candidates and not others dilutes the speech of some citizens and effectively compels speech from other citizens through the government. A better approach would be restricting all political advertising to some government provided platform. This would avoid the wasteful government matching.

[everforward]

That line of logic is utterly insane even at a glance because it argues that citizens cannot be taxed for something they don’t support.

Shall we ask the DEA when they’ll be issuing refunds?

“Diluting” speech is equally incoherent. The presidents state of the nation address drags people away from my Twitter feed, so the government is diluting my speech. If the argument is just that the government can’t do anything that would make a citizen less heard, the government ceases to function because practically everything they do is more consequential than any citizens opinion.

The First Amendment doesn’t even say anything about being heard. It is a right to speak, not a right to be heard. Funding a candidate does not remove the right or ability for other candidates to speak.

> A better approach would be restricting all political advertising to some government provided platform.

This is not even close to passing even a cursory First Amendment analysis. Telling people they can’t advertise on Facebook/Google/etc is absolutely a First Amendment issue. It is literal speech, and the right to express it is abridged by location. This will never happen without an amendment.

[giantg2]

"This will never happen without an amendment."

When did I ever argue that it should?

The main flaw with the funding match is that campaign spending is already very wasteful and we shouldn't be trying to match that waste with tax dollars.

But you could go read Davis and the other case history about the undue restrictions and how a candidates own speech is constrained by matching schemes.

[everforward]

> When did I ever argue that it should?

You didn’t, but I would also presume that reason dictates solutions be practical. Modifying the First Amendment is so far out of the Overton Window that I struggle to even call it a potential solution.

> But you could go read Davis and the other case history about the undue restrictions and how a candidates own speech is constrained by matching schemes.

That is not what Davis says; I would encourage you to re-read it or perhaps read it for the first time. Davis doesn’t even have to do with matching schemes, it has to do with differing contribution limits from third parties depending on a candidates own spending.

It’s still profoundly dumb, to the point where I feel worse off for having read it. Apparently a candidate being wealthy enough to bankroll orders of magnitude more funding than an opponent does not create “an appearance of corruption”, despite magnitudes of evidence on how effective advertising is. Alito was either an idiot or corrupt; probably the latter given his rank.

[giantg2]

"Modifying the First Amendment is so far out of the Overton Window that I struggle to even call it a potential solution."

So too with the court reform suggestion.

"Davis doesn’t even have to do with matching schemes,"

No, but it is the case law that the appeals court felt compelled to follow with respect to matching schemes and later upheld in the combined appeal.

"Apparently a candidate being wealthy enough to bankroll orders of magnitude more funding than an opponent does not create “an appearance of corruption”, despite magnitudes of evidence on how effective advertising is."

If it's that effective and leading to poor outcomes, then regulate it like tobacco ads instead of forcing additional funding to a broken system. The majority of the political ads are intentionally deceptive anyways. We shouldn't be figuring how we can equitably fund the continuation of this shit, but how to reduce it overall.

[ETH_start]

The better solution is to continue respecting the First Amendment and not trying to restrict in any way, political speech, and instead reforming the electoral system so that the volume of speech one is able to output through the expenditure of financial resources does not have an impact on election outcomes.

[giantg2]

How so, and how is that different than my proposal in other comments?

[ETH_start]

Restricting political advertising to one platform would be a massive abrogation of the right to engage in political speech.

[giantg2]

The right as it is defined now, yes. The ability to restrict or redefine that right is still an option. See tobacco advertising and other harmful advertising that has been restricted.

Again, what are those electoral changes you believe will fix the issue?

[ETH_start]

So what I propose is completely different than what you're proposing, which is that you're proposing massively restricting the right to engage in political speech as we define it now.

[samatman]

That was a good decision, because the rule creates a negative responsiveness paradox. Spending money to support your preferred candidate should not make opposing candidates stronger.

That was the effect of Arizona's rule: money spent to promote a candidate was matched by free public money, which the opposing candidate did not have exert any effort to obtain.

Good voting systems minimize this effect. The US first-past-the-post system is not a good voting system, but that's no excuse for making it worse.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_responsiveness_parado...

[cbsks]

Why should money be involved in supporting a candidate? Doesn’t the democratic action of voting do that?

[pc86]

Yard signs, phone calls, websites, GOTV operations, consultants, debates, mailers, all of these things cost money. The current system requires you to appeal to donors with a winning message to get contributions to pay for these.

Who decides which candidates get limited public funds? Are you just going to split it equally between whoever runs? Why should the public pay for fringe campaigns that won't get any votes?

[kelipso]

Usually you do a poll and set a threshold for funding, like 5% or something, to avoid funding fringe candidates.

[ETH_start]

The Supreme Court is defending the First Amendment, and "court reform" is a euphemism for eliminating the independence of the judiciary in order to dismantle those First Amendment protections.

[SauciestGNU]

Supreme Court justices are taking bribes to deliver outcomes their cronies want, and "court reform" is a euphemism for holding justices selling our country accountable.

[ETH_start]

There is zero evidence of any bribery. This is just more salacious defamation by those who want to destroy the independence of the judiciary.

[defrost]

Sure.

Harlan Crow just loves to sprinkle robust black men in gowns with money, six star vacations, and RV's as much as he loves painting by Adolf Hitler and Nazi memorabilia.

We shouldn't kink shame or say that he expects any quo to his quids.

> those who want to destroy the independence of the judiciary.

Bit late to whine about that fait accompli.

It'll take decades to wind back Mitch McConnell's two decade deep tainting of the US justice system with Federalist Society stooges.

[ETH_start]

He might love to shower his friends with gifts, and might find friendship with exactly the kind of minds that are bright enough to become Supreme Court justices.

>It'll take decades to wind back Mitch McConnell's two decade deep tainting of the US justice system with Federalist Society stooges.

Appointing justices when a space opens up is the standard way of doing it, and federalist judges adhere to the Constitution, so outside of a certain ideological camp, there is nothing wrong with appointing them.

The lifetime tenure gives the Supreme Court justices a degree of independence that would vanish should every congress and president be able to totally capture the court in a single four year cycle by adding any arbitrary number of new justices to out vote the sitting justices.

[consteval]

I think even the most conservative of conservatives couldn't really argue our Supreme Court is defending the First Amendment. There's no speech restriction here - rather it's an attempt to further enrich the establishment by ensuring only career politicians and the ultra-rich can campaign. If anything, this is a speech restriction, because I do not have the ability to have my own campaign speech.

[ETH_start]

There is a very obvious argument that restricting the right to pay for political advertisements violates the First Amendment. You can read the argument here:

https://www.fec.gov/resources/legal-resources/litigation/cu_...

[consteval]

Yes, there is an argument, that doesn't mean I agree with the argument or that's it's even reasonable. You can make an argument for anything, certainly we've made arguments for eugenics in the past.

In my opinion, corporations are fundamentally different than individuals and only the naivest reading of the constitution would extend such rights to them.

In addition, even if you can argue it, you still have to face the reality that this is harmful. Just because you're able to play an "erm, akchually!" game doesn't mean you can ignore consequences. There are many things which are technically correct but in practice are awful.

Exhibit A: you could argue the second amendment extends to fully automatic miniature machine guns. And we allowed those for a long time. In practice, there's virtually no benevolent use for such weapons and outlawing them is a no-brainer. Outlawing such weapons was a large factor in dismantling the American mafias of the past. Now nobody really cares, and we've all moved on - obviously, it was not such an important right in the first place.

[ETH_start]

You haven't actually contended with the legal reasoning provided for this position — that corporations are entitled First Amendment protections — by the courts. So you're just assuming they're wrong, without any kind of substantiation. Your reaction is entirely politically motivated as opposed to motivated by careful and objective study of the law.

[consteval]

My response it motivated by outcomes, your response is motivated by an extreme devotion to far-right ideology.

We both understand that such rulings undermine democracy and are detrimental to our country as a whole. However, that is what you want, because you are an extremist. You merely pretend to use law as a cover, when in reality you're jumping at any and all opportunities to undermine democracy.

There exists not a single reasonable person who believes giving large, powerful corporations the power to influence elections is a good thing. You know, and understand, that is a bad thing.

I do not care if the "law", as you understand it, promotes bad things. They are still bad.

In addition, before this ruling and others the opposite has been argued. You, too, are not participating in "careful and objective study of the law". We have many, many years of legal precedent being overturned here. Why, then, does that precedent not matter?

Please, drop the facade of objectivity because I don't care. Either say what you intend to say or do all of us a favor and stay silent. I grow tired of those so ashamed of their own beliefs they dare not speak them.

[pc86]

SCOTUS doesn't "attack" anything. They issue a ruling based on law. It's funny that any time there's a judicial ruling we like, it's fair and impartial, and any time there's a judicial ruling we don't like, it's judicial activism.

The other reply already makes it pretty clear why this Arizona's law violated 1A. If you want to make a legal argument that donating money to a political campaign isn't political speech, go for it. But right now it's considered protected political speech so this ruling makes perfect sense.

"Court reform" is a funny way of phrasing "ignoring the Constitution."

This isn't even a partisan issue. Harris has been on the ballot 4 months and her campaign has raised approximately 3x the amount of money Trump's has. Moneyed interests are absolutely on the side of Harris this time around.

[zaptheimpaler]

The Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade 2 years ago and the Chevron doctrine recently.

Do you think these judgements were both supported by the constitution when they were made and also not supported by the same constitution when overturned? Which one was the "ruling based on law"?

If there was a straight deterministic line from the laws to the rulings the court make, we would need far less courts or lawyers or highly trained judges. The fact is there are a million laws and precedents with 100 applying to any given situation in slightly different ways with many interpretations. Laws are written vaguely to keep them somewhat future-proof and leave room for interpretation/evolution. The courts do have a lot of power here.

[pc86]

It was Chevron deference that was overturned and it's a very important distinction. The only thing that changed was that courts were required to give deference to the agency interpretation of a statute. Now the agency needs to prove they're not misinterpreting the statute. That seems like a good change, no? Having to prove you're right in court instead of the judge being required to just assume you're right unless they're overwhelming evidence to the contrary?

[zaptheimpaler]

No, it seems to severely undercut the efficiency and power of regulatory agencies to me. Court cases are extremely slow & expensive and having to wait 5-10 years to act is almost as good as not being able to act. I think this might be good in a world where senate could quickly make/amend laws and courts could quickly decide on them, but that's far from where we are..

But that's besides the point, now we're arguing about which is better, but the point is neither is unambiguously correct or following/ignoring the constitution as you earlier claimed. It's simply the court using their authority to take a political stance.

The courts are not directly answerable to the public and hence should not make political decisions in a democracy, yet they made a decision that goes against what the majority [1] of the country wanted.

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2022/07/06/majority-of-...

[consteval]

It seems like a good change if you're a Helen Keller impersonator. To anyone not blind and deaf, we understand the intention of that ruling is to cripple the agencies as much as possible.

That is, and has been, conservative political policy. If you're conservative and ideologically opposed to the notion of the bureaucracy in general then it's a good change, because now they are much weaker.

The fatal flaw you're making here is that courts are impartial. No, the intention of this overturning is such that rules which are obviously correct can still be challenged, delayed, and even killed by conservative courts. It takes even a cursory glance at the courts in Texas to understand this is the case.

There're two aspects to law: what it says, and how it's practiced. What it says is that overstepping agencies must now prove they are following the laws as set by Congress. In practice, this means agencies will be blocked by extremely ungenerous conservative interpretations of law such that they cannot enforce common-sense regulations, with the intention of further empowering the private sector.

[ETH_start]

Later rulings supersede previous ones because later rulings review their precedents and will correct mistakes that they identify in their precedents, so if a later ruling found those earlier rulings incorrect in their application of the law, we assume there was in fact a misjudgment in those older rulings. The justices provided legal reasoning in overturning Roe vs Wade and the Chevron doctrine, and unless you find some glaring mistake in that reasoning, the default assumption should be that the rulings to overturn these doctrines were legally sound.

[consteval]

This completely ignores the political motivations for rulings. In my opinion, a person who does not at least try to address the obvious partisanism of our current court is not worth listening to.

Please keep in mind some justices have gone as far as recommending revisiting rulings on same-sex marriage and interracial marriage. We cannot continue to play stupid.

[ETH_start]

There is no obvious political motivation. You're simply assuming that a ruling that is favored by the political camp you identify with could only be overruled due to political motivations, which is not sound reasoning, and only reveals your own political motivations.

[consteval]

No, I'm reasoning based on the history of these judges and the extreme conservative stances that they are, in fact, politically motivated. Not to mention they're not anywhere close to consistent in their views. On one hand, they're extremely textualist and will routinely shut down power for other branches of government. On the other, when it comes time to save Trump, of course they then declare former presidents have absolute immunity.

Once again, if you're not able to at least begin to acknowledge the obvious political biases of our current court, you're not worth talking to. There's no point in arguing with dishonest people, because they can just lie when they feel like they're losing. As a side note, playing stupid is also a form of dishonesty. I don't really care if you "know nothing", if that's the case then don't bother speaking.

[zaptheimpaler]

This is again assuming that there is a binary right or wrong in how the law is applied. This is an ideal of the law, where there is precisely one law that applies to any given situation, describing exactly what is legal or not, with no ambiguity or contradiction. Speak to any lawyer or read about it, and you will find this is not true.

Here's a random article i came across today speaking about the ambiguity in the law applied to a particular case - https://archive.is/Z6V2Q . Just something I came across randomly, this is not uncommon. A quote:

> “I know it seems kind of strange that there isn’t a definitive answer to this, but that’s because the rule is based on a principle that can be applied in lots of different contexts, and it just happens that it hasn’t often been applied in this context before,” she said.

Here is a quote directly from the ruling overturning Chevron:

> Finally, the view that interpretation of ambiguous statutory provi- sions amounts to policymaking suited for political actors rather than courts is especially mistaken because it rests on a profound misconcep- tion of the judicial role. Resolution of statutory ambiguities involves legal interpretation, and that task does not suddenly become policy- making just because a court has an “agency to fall back on.” Kisor, 588 U. S., at 575. Courts interpret statutes, no matter the context, based on the traditional tools of statutory construction, not individual policy preferences.

In other words, the court directly saying that it is their job to resolve legal ambiguities.

The logic you provide to uphold the overturning of Roe vs. Wade should apply just as well to the original Roe vs. Wade too. There was not any "glaring mistake" in the reasoning, there's just a lot of room for subjectivity.

[ETH_start]

The assumption of judicial law is that there is an objective correct answer and that later rulings are more likely to arrive at it than their precedents.

The passage you quote does not contradict this. Note it states that court interpretation is

"based on the traditional tools of statutory construction, not individual policy preferences"

The ambiguity means that the correctness is a matter of probability, which implies that the probability of making a correct ruling increases with the amount of precedent a ruling has to fall back on.

[adamc]

Great! And after we pack the court full of liberals, I'm sure you'll be on-board with every ruling.

[ETH_start]

The whole point of winning presidencies is to appoint justices when one retires or passes away.

Packing the court, i.e. expanding the court to obviate the need to wait for a justice to retire or die in order to appoint a new one, on the other hand, effectively eliminates the independence of the judiciary, by nullifying the independence that Supreme Court justices obtain as a result of their lifetime tenure.

[adamc]

The rulings overturned will be sound, by your own rubric.

And that has not, historically, been "the whole point of winning presidencies".

[gottorf]

> It's funny that any time there's a judicial ruling we like, it's fair and impartial, and any time there's a judicial ruling we don't like, it's judicial activism.

It is funny, but at the same time I absolutely believe that in many cases it's possible to distinguish between judgments of the activist kind and those that aren't.

Critics of SCOTUS should keep in mind that they agree unanimously more often than one might think. In fact, it's the modal outcome over all terms, with roughly third of all cases decided unanimously. IIRC 7-2 or more one-sided rulings (meaning more concurrence between all justices) occur roughly four-fifths of the time.

[jgalt212]

Truth.

The courts have become more / too important as Congress has become more ineffectual.

[potato3732842]

Congress wouldn't matter as much if the feds hadn't spend 200yr usurping so much power from the states.

[dingnuts]

well the states really kind of blew it when they chose slavery as the hill to literally die on, didn't they?

it's not like this is all on Congress..

[potato3732842]

I was thinking more recent stuff, like fed income tax and then "giving" that money back with strings resulting in the current "we'll fund your state level EPA and DOT agencies but only if they goose step in line with us" status quo. Said status quo means that every stupid nitpick of federal law winds up getting fought tooth and nail over.

[adamc]

It wasn't even slavery that caused the war, but secession. (I am not arguing that slavery didn't cause secession -- it did -- but that wasn't what created support in the north for fighting a war over it.)

[gottorf]

That states' rights were used to fight for the right to maintain slavery does not mean that the concept of states' rights is wrong. It is slavery that is wrong.

[krapp]

I'm inherently mistrustful of arguments for "state's rights" that don't explicitly state what rights are being advocated for, that the existence of a Federal government is standing in the way of.

It's usually something gross and regressive, like wanting to mandate Christian doctrine as law, or to reintroduce racial segregation or to send all the gays to conversion therapy. Otherwise it would be something normal they could just, you know, pass a law about. Because states do have rights, they just don't have absolute sovereignty.

[rat87]

It was also used as an argument to fight for Jim Crow laws. So called "States rights" have a very ugly history in America

[consteval]

But the unintended consequence is that we were forced to weaken states' rights, so that we could abolish slavery. We could not have federally abolished slavery if we did not first give the federal government the power to do that. Unfortunately, the union had to take that power by force.

[adamc]

Right, but once you fight a war over it, the SCOTUS is forced to make choices to legitimize the actions of the remaining USA, and state's rights were... de-valued.

[Dylan16807]

It's more that states don't really do things better than federal.

[adamc]

That is such a distorted fantasy I don't really know what to say.