Beating Up Thurgood Marshall

Monday 14 September 2009

by: Sam Ferguson, t r u t h o u t | Perspective

(Illustration: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t)
 

Chief Justice Roberts has gone for the rope-a-dope, and it appears that he just dealt the knock out blow.

Based on the tenor of the argument yesterday at the Supreme Court in Citizens United v. FEC, the Supreme Court is poised to overrule the 1990 decision in Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce. If they do, corporations will be allowed to use general treasury funds to run advertisements and campaign on behalf of federal candidates. Corporate cash will flood our elections and special interests will be enshrined in the Constitution.

But the blow will not just be to the proponents of campaign finance reform. It will be a stinging uppercut to the legacy of Justice Thurgood Marshall.

Austin was one of Marshall's final decisions, written just a year before he retired from an illustrious career. Before becoming the first African-American to sit on the Supreme Court, Marshall lead the NAACP's fight against segregation and argued the historic case of Brown v. Board of Education. In Austin, Justice Marshall upheld a Michigan law that prohibited corporations from spending general treasury funds to support or oppose candidates for office. He reasoned that Corporate wealth can unfairly influence elections when it is deployed in the form of independent expenditures, just as it can when it assumes the guise of political contributions  read on