Castigating Conservative Justices in the Kagan Hearing

Hans von Spakovsky / June 28, 2010

Listening to Senators Feinstein, Durbin, Leahy and Schumer castigating the current members of the U.S. Supreme Court in their opening statements in the Kagan confirmation hearing shows that they apparently want to turn this proceeding into a star chamber on Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito, among others, as opposed to an examination of Elena Kagan’s judicial philosophy and ideology.  Hearing their repetitive attacks on the Court’s decision in the Citizens United v. FEC decision also reminds me of a famous quote by Vladimir Lenin, who once said that if you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth.

These critics keep saying that the five-member majority on the Court overturned 100 years of established law and precedent, a claim that is completely false on its face, as I explain here.  The case did overturn a 20-year old precedent that had itself been decided by a narrow five-judge majority that ignored stare decisis and simply bypassed a long string of prior cases throwing out bans on independent political expenditures and advocacy and extending First Amendment rights to corporations and associations as if they did not exist, creating a new justification for limiting political speech that was based on their own views of public policy, not the provisions of the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. (more…)