[nerdponx]

I'm nothing close to a scholar on the topic, but that CAP article does not at all make it sound like Citizens United was inevitable. It does make it clear that the ruling builds on other old and bad rulings, but it's still quite a leap.

[mindslight]

It made it to the Supreme Council, so obviously there were good arguments on both sides and it could have been decided the other way. But fundamentally the rationalization of how it was decided is rooted in this deep seated assertion that people working for companies are doing so personally-voluntarily, ultimately stemming from the US's broken legal conception of rights in terms of a "negative" framing. While it would be great to reframe individual liberties in a positive sense so conflicts could be weighed equitably, I don't see that happening any time soon. Hence, focusing on regulating the government-created liability-limiting legal structures that encourage such scale in the first place.

[nerdponx]

Yeah but again, none of that is inevitable, it's merely convenient. We have seen justices go through astounding contortions of logic to design a case along certain ideological lines, many times. The availability of a chain of reasoning does not mean that the decision had to be decided the way it was decided.

[mindslight]

Sure, none of that is inevitable. But for example the Constitutional framing in terms of negative rights is pretty deeply entrenched.