As the Supreme Court returns today for its new term, a bipartisan group of law professors and prominent attorneys, including seven former state attorneys general, has issued a letter criticizing the Court’s ruling in January in Citizens United v. FEC, which equated corporate spending in elections with free speech rights, and calling on Congress to consider a constitutional amendment to overturn the decision.
Free Speech for People and People For the American Way announced the release of the letter, which was signed by more than fifty leading law professors and attorneys, including former Massachusetts Attorneys General Frank Bellotti and Scott Harshbarger; former Mississippi Attorney General Michael Moore; former Arizona Attorney General Grant Woods; leading constitutional scholars; and numerous former federal and state prosecutors from across the country.
The diverse group of attorneys, scholars, and public servants call the Citizens United decision “a serious danger to effective self-government of, for and by the American people.” The signatories urge Congress to consider a constitutional amendment to address that danger, noting that “most of the seventeen amendments adopted since the original Bill of Rights have corrected what the American people understood were obstacles to the equal rights of all people to participate in self-government on equal terms.”
You can read the joint press announcement of Free Speech For People and People For the American Way here.
You can view the full letter and all of the signatories here.
This letter demonstrates the growing momentum for a constitutional amendment to address the fabricated corporate rights doctrine upon which the Citizens United ruling rests. Join us at Free Speech For People to restore our Constitution and our democracy to the people.