Grumbling over the Supreme Court's recent decision in Citizens United continue to rumble like distant thunder. Will the decision go down in history as one more in the Court's long line of egregious opinions? Likely! Will it have much effect on the American political landscape? Likely not! Simply ask yourself, how much worse can it get?
The Court's opinions are exercises in obfuscation. Locating anything that can be called an argument is a daunting task. Claims are made and justified merely by citations to previous opinions. But this practice leaves behind the contexts and arguments of the cited cases. Unless one has a battalion of clerks, checking all the citations is practically impossible. Luckily, in Citizens United, Stevens, in dissent, has done the work. He clearly shows that the Court's rationale lacks any logical basis and amounts to merely the claim that the Court's majority finds the rationale in Austin not to be compelling. But this practice is ludicrous. To use one rationale that is not compelling to reject another that is not compelling can be likened to trying to refute a lie by uttering another. After all, the Court's rationale in Citizens United was not found to be compelling by the four dissenting members. All split decisions are based on non-compelling rationales.
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