Will it really take a Consititutional Amendment to overturn Citizens United?

[Fresh_Start]

That part of Secretary Clinton's speech made me gasp.
If that is what it will take, I fear it won't happen

[unblock]

1. the supreme court could, of course, reverse itself

but a constitutional amendment would be far more enduring.

you're right, though; a constitutional amendment is always a tall order, especially if the moneyed interests oppose it.

[liberal N proud]

2. Unless the SCOTUS gives a different interpretation.

[MattP]

3. Much easier to get a new court justice

Amendments in this day and age, look at the ERA it died a long painful death

[pipoman]

7. It always makes me chuckle the amount of people who believe

A court shift will have any effect at all on past court rulings.....a rare overturn would take 10 to 20 years minimum if it could happen at all....unlikely

[FarPoint]

4. I think that it is a realistic goal.

We are all in a critical state of survival mode as a nation at this point. Citizens United is causing our country to implode essentially.

[sofa king]

6. And a realistic political football, too!

I am a cynical person, recently accused of being bitter toward and un-accepting of our opposition. And I TOTALLY AM THAT PERSON, DAMMIT.

So I can think of few better ways to make Republicans show their asses, all the way down to municipal dogcatcher, than to snag their belt-hooks on the horns of a dilemma whereby they must accept money from their usual sources, and publicly oppose a political funding Amendment that could easily be made an election-year issue for the next twenty years and make corporate donations unfashionable long before it passes.

The Democratic Party could help it along by refusing to accept such donations, assuming their stock continues to rise. That move would, in turn, keep the Democratic Party unappealing to those unscrupulous Republican politicians who prefer easy money to all other things (hint: all of them).

What better way to separate the men from the... totally awesome, gonna-bring-it-home women, ha ha!

[Vattel]

5. The decision was a reasonable one. A constitutional amendment is the best solution.

Former Justice Stevens has formulated a good proposal for such an amendment. Here it si:

"Neither the First Amendment nor any other provision of this Constitution shall be construed to prohibit the Congress or any state from imposing reasonable limits on the amount of money that candidates for public office, or their supporters, may spend in election campaigns."

[elleng]

8. Maybe.

Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1 (1976), is a landmark case in American campaign finance law. In a per curiam opinion, the Supreme Court of the United States struck down on First Amendment grounds several provisions in the 1974 Amendments to the Federal Election Campaign Act. The most prominent portions of the case struck down limits on spending by campaigns and citizens, but upheld the provision limiting the size of individual contributions to campaigns. The Court also narrowed, and then upheld, the Act's disclosure provisions and struck down, on separation of powers grounds, the make-up of the Federal Election Commission which as written allowed Congress to directly appoint members of the Commission, an executive agency.

Buckley's principles were determinative in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, No. 08-205, 558 U.S. 310 (2010) in which a 5 to 4 decision held that both unions and corporations could also spend unlimited money from their general treasuries during elections.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckley_v._Valeo