Download or read book Plutocrats United written by Richard L. Hasen and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2016-01-12 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Campaign financing is one of today’s most divisive political issues. The left asserts that the electoral process is rife with corruption. The right protests that the real aim of campaign limits is to suppress political activity and protect incumbents. Meanwhile, money flows freely on both sides. In Plutocrats United, Richard Hasen argues that both left and right avoid the key issue of the new Citizens United era: balancing political inequality with free speech. The Supreme Court has long held that corruption and its appearance are the only reasons to constitutionally restrict campaign funds. Progressives often agree but have a much broader view of corruption. Hasen argues for a new focus and way forward: if the government is to ensure robust political debate, the Supreme Court should allow limits on money in politics to prevent those with great economic power from distorting the political process.
Download or read book We the Corporations How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights written by Adam Winkler and published by Liveright Publishing. This book was released on 2018-02-27 with total page 485 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: National Book Award for Nonfiction Finalist National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction Finalist A New York Times Notable Book of the Year A Washington Post Notable Book of the Year A PBS “Now Read This” Book Club Selection Named one of the Best Books of the Year by the Economist and the Boston Globe A landmark exposé and “deeply engaging legal history” of one of the most successful, yet least known, civil rights movements in American history (Washington Post). In a revelatory work praised as “excellent and timely” (New York Times Book Review, front page), Adam Winkler, author of Gunfight, once again makes sense of our fraught constitutional history in this incisive portrait of how American businesses seized political power, won “equal rights,” and transformed the Constitution to serve big business. Uncovering the deep roots of Citizens United, he repositions that controversial 2010 Supreme Court decision as the capstone of a centuries-old battle for corporate personhood. “Tackling a topic that ought to be at the heart of political debate” (Economist), Winkler surveys more than four hundred years of diverse cases—and the contributions of such legendary legal figures as Daniel Webster, Roger Taney, Lewis Powell, and even Thurgood Marshall—to reveal that “the history of corporate rights is replete with ironies” (Wall Street Journal). We the Corporations is an uncompromising work of history to be read for years to come.
Download or read book Political Brands written by Ciara Torres-Spelliscy and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2019 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From ‘I Like Ike’ to Trump’s MAGA hats, branding and politics have gone hand in hand, selling ideas, ideals and candidates. Political Brands explores the legal framework for the use of commercial branding and advertising techniques in presidential political campaigns, as well as the impact of politics on commercial brands. This thought provoking book examines how branding is used by citizens to change public policy, from Civil Rights activists in the 1960s to survivors of the 2018 Parkland massacre.
Download or read book Super PAC written by Conor M. Dowling and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-03-21 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent federal court activity has dramatically changed the regulatory environment of campaign finance in the United States. Since 2010, the judiciary has decided that corporations and labor unions may freely spend in American elections, and that so-called "Super PACs" can accept unlimited contributions from private citizens for the purpose of buying election advertising. Despite the potential for such unregulated contributions to dramatically alter the conduct of campaigns, little is known about where Super PACs get their money, where they spend it, or how their message compares with other political groups. Moreover, we know almost nothing about whether individual citizens even notice Super PACs, or whether they distinguish between Super PAC activity and political activity by other political groups. This book addresses those questions. Using campaign finance data, election returns, advertising archives, a public opinion survey, and survey experiments, Super PAC! provides unprecedented insight into the behavior of these organizations, and how they affect public opinion and voting behavior. The first in-depth exploration of the topic, this book will make significant contributions in both political science and applied policy.
Download or read book So Much for Democracy written by United States Supreme Court and published by Nimble Books LLC. This book was released on 2009-10 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the complete printed text of the opinions in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court decision that President Obama specifically singled out for sharp criticism in the 2010 State of the Union address because of the wide latitude that it gives to corporations to flood political campaigns with money. There's no substitute for reading the full text of vital documents. This is the most readable format for doing so.
Download or read book Money Politics and the Constitution written by Monica Youn and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A brilliant collection of essays on one of the most important contemporary constitutional issues: when can and should the government be able to regulate campaign spending? Each essay offers original insights, and together they are a superb examination of the intersection of politics and constitutional law. If there is to be a new jurisprudence in this area, this book is likely its foundation."--Erwin Chemerinsky, founding dean, School of Law, University of California-Irvine In the U.S. Supreme Court case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, five justices ruled that corporations and unions had a constitutional right to spend unlimited sums in elections. In so doing, they overturned decades of precedent and dozens of laws. The ruling earned banner headlines, a sharp State of the Union rebuke, and public disapproval hovering near 80 percent in the polls. In the 2010 election that followed, independent spending spiked, much of it done secretly. The decision ranks among the Court's most controversial and consequential. This volume is an attempt to map out the complex labyrinth that led to Citizens United and to explore where this decision may lead. The chapters in it arose from a symposium sponsored by NYU's Brennan Center for Justice just nine weeks after the Citizens United decision was announced.
Download or read book Super PACs written by Louise I. Gerdes and published by Greenhaven Publishing LLC. This book was released on 2014-05-20 with total page 113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The passage of Citizens United by the Supreme Court in 2010 sparked a renewed debate about campaign spending by large political action committees, or Super PACs. Its ruling said that it is okay for corporations and labor unions to spend as much as they want in advertising and other methods to convince people to vote for or against a candidate. This book provides a wide range of opinions on the issue. Includes primary and secondary sources from a variety of perspectives; eyewitnesses, scientific journals, government officials, and many others.
Download or read book Corporations Are People Too written by Kent Greenfield and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-23 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why we’re better off treating corporations as people under the law—and making them behave like citizens Are corporations people? The U.S. Supreme Court launched a heated debate when it ruled in Citizens United that corporations can claim the same free speech rights as humans. Should corporations be able to claim rights of free speech, religious conscience, and due process? Kent Greenfield provides an answer: Sometimes. With an analysis sure to challenge the assumptions of both progressives and conservatives, Greenfield explores corporations' claims to constitutional rights and the foundational conflicts about their obligations in society. He argues that a blanket opposition to corporate personhood is misguided, since it is consistent with both the purpose of corporations and the Constitution itself that corporations can claim rights at least some of the time. The problem with Citizens United is not that corporations have a right to speak, but for whom they speak. The solution is not to end corporate personhood but to require corporations to act more like citizens.
Download or read book Unfree Speech written by Samantha Sellinger and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-02-09 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At a time when campaign finance reform is widely viewed as synonymous with cleaning up Washington and promoting political equality, Bradley Smith, a nationally recognized expert on campaign finance reform, argues that all restriction on campaign giving should be eliminated. In Unfree Speech, he presents a bold, convincing argument for the repeal of laws that regulate political spending and contributions, contending that they violate the right to free speech and ultimately diminish citizens' power. Smith demonstrates that these laws, which often force ordinary people making modest contributions of cash or labor to register with the Federal Election Commission or various state agencies, fail to accomplish their stated objectives. In fact, they have worked to entrench incumbents in office, deaden campaign discourse, burden grassroots political activity with needless regulation, and distance Americans from an increasingly professional, detached political class. Rather than attempting to plug "loopholes" in campaign finance law or instituting taxpayer-financed campaigns, Smith proposes a return to core First Amendment values of free speech and an unfettered right to engage in political activity. Smith finds that campaign contributions have little corrupting effect on the legislature and shows that an unrestrained system of contributions and spending actually enhances equality. More money, not less, is needed in the political system, Smith concludes. Unfree Speech draws upon constitutional law and historical research to explain why campaign finance regulation is doomed and to illustrate the potentially drastic costs of efforts to make it succeed. Whatever one thinks about the impact of money on electoral politics, no one should take a final stand without reading Smith's controversial and important arguments.
Download or read book Citizens Uniting to Restore Our Democracy written by Daniel Kemmis and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2020-08-13 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The election of Donald Trump in 2016 shocked the American political system, and the aftershocks have widened the nation’s partisan divide and magnified deep tensions in the public sphere. At a time when our political focus so often shrinks to the immediacy of the latest jolt, this book puts these alarming events in a much broader—and more manageable—context. Even as we become more polarized along partisan and ideological lines, author Daniel Kemmis reminds us that authentic conservatism and progressivism are both deeply rooted in genuine human concerns and in the shared history of our democratic republic. Citizens Uniting to Restore Our Democracy is at once a cogent analysis of what ails our body politic and a wide-ranging, deeply informed prescription for healing our wounded democracy. The Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission amplified the role of big money in American politics. But, as Kemmis notes, the threats to our democracy long preceded Citizens United. While the influence of big money and relentless partisanship can make ordinary citizens feel powerless in a chaotic political culture, Citizens Uniting to Restore Our Democracy offers a stirring reassertion of the power Americans possess as collaborative problem-solvers—namely, the very homegrown self-governing skills needed to rebuild our democracy. Drawing on several decades of public service—as a politician, activist, and scholar, one of Utne Reader’s “100 Visionaries Changing the World”—Kemmis highlights the transformative potential latent in the everyday practice of engaged citizenship. Leveraged by new mechanisms, such as an effective democratic lobby of the kind his book advocates, that reservoir of active, hands-on citizenship must be mobilized into a twenty-first-century version of the Progressive movement, providing both necessary and sufficient conditions for the renewal of the nation’s democratic institutions.
Download or read book The Campaign Finance Cases written by Melvin I. Urofsky and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2020-10-23 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rarely does the Supreme Court reverse itself as quickly and profoundly as it did in recent campaign finance cases, with the Citizens United decision of 2010 undoing the constraints of the McCain-Feingold Act upheld in McConnell v. Federal Election Commission (2003). And rarely have the stakes seemed so high, as billionaires vie for elected office and dark money floods political campaigns. In timely fashion, this new edition updates Melvin Urofsky’s classic study of campaign finance law, bringing his cogent analysis of the relevant statutes and court cases up to date. Urofsky explains in clear and convincing language what was—and is—at stake in the twists and turns of campaign finance laws taken up by the nation’s highest court in the past decades. Beginning with Buckley v. Valeo (1976) and moving through McConnell, Citizens United, and finally McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission (2014), Urofsky discusses the two principles at issue in these cases: freedom of political speech, and the protection of the political process from undue influence. Conventional wisdom holds that in such cases liberals want greater restrictions and conservatives want corporations to have greater freedom to influence voters. But working from a rich store of primary sources, probing the motivations and ideas of all participants in the campaign finance legal story, Urofsky reveals a far more complex picture, one whose significance transcends simple political ideologies. In a time of controversies over political speech in the blogosphere, social media, and cable news, and claims of electoral fraud, The Campaign Finance Cases offers a much-needed, balanced account of how issues critical to American democracy figure in the adjudication of campaign finance law, and how a changing political and media landscape might alter the process.
Download or read book Learn about the United States written by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and published by Government Printing Office. This book was released on 2009 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Learn About the United States" is intended to help permanent residents gain a deeper understanding of U.S. history and government as they prepare to become citizens. The product presents 96 short lessons, based on the sample questions from which the civics portion of the naturalization test is drawn. An audio CD that allows students to listen to the questions, answers, and civics lessons read aloud is also included. For immigrants preparing to naturalize, the chance to learn more about the history and government of the United States will make their journey toward citizenship a more meaningful one.
Download or read book Borderline Citizens written by Robert C. McGreevey and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-15 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Borderline Citizens explores the intersection of U.S. colonial power and Puerto Rican migration. Robert C. McGreevey examines a series of confrontations in the early decades of the twentieth century between colonial migrants seeking work and citizenship in the metropole and various groups—employers, colonial officials, court officers, and labor leaders—policing the borders of the U.S. economy and polity. Borderline Citizens deftly shows the dynamic and contested meaning of American citizenship. At a time when colonial officials sought to limit citizenship through the definition of Puerto Rico as a U.S. territory, Puerto Ricans tested the boundaries of colonial law when they migrated to California, Arizona, New York, and other states on the mainland. The conflicts and legal challenges created when Puerto Ricans migrated to the U.S. mainland thus serve, McGreevey argues, as essential, if overlooked, evidence crucial to understanding U.S. empire and citizenship. McGreevey demonstrates the value of an imperial approach to the history of migration. Drawing attention to the legal claims migrants made on the mainland, he highlights the agency of Puerto Rican migrants and the efficacy of their efforts to find an economic, political, and legal home in the United States. At the same time, Borderline Citizens demonstrates how colonial institutions shaped migration streams through a series of changing colonial legal categories that tracked alongside corporate and government demands for labor mobility. McGreevey describes a history shaped as much by the force of U.S. power overseas as by the claims of colonial migrants within the United States.
Download or read book Corporations Are Not People written by Jeffrey D. Clements and published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers. This book was released on 2012-01-09 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision marked a culminating victory for the bizarre doctrine that corporations are people with free speech and other rights. Now, Americans cannot stop corporations from spending billions of dollars to dominate elections and keep our elected representatives on a tight leash. Jeffrey Clements reveals the far-reaching effects of this strange and destructive idea, which flies in the face of not only all common sense but most of American legal history as well. Most importantly, he offers solutions—including a constitutional amendment to reverse Citizens United—and tools to help readers join a grassroots drive to implement them. Ending corporate control of our Constitution and government is not about a triumph of one political ideology over another—it’s about restoring the republican principles of American democracy.
Download or read book An Introduction to Constitutional Law written by Randy E. Barnett and published by Aspen Publishing. This book was released on 2023-02-28 with total page 473 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Introduction to Constitutional Law teaches the narrative of constitutional law as it has developed historically and provides the essential background to understand how this foundational body of law has come to be what it is today. This multimedia experience combines a book and video series to engage students more directly in the study of constitutional law. All students—even those unfamiliar with American history—will garner a firm understanding of how constitutional law has evolved. An eleven-hour online video library brings the Supreme Court’s most important decisions to life. Videos are enriched by photographs, maps, and audio from the Supreme Court. The book and videos are accessible for all levels: law school, college, high school, home school, and independent study. Students can read and watch these materials before class to prepare for lectures or study after class to fill in any gaps in their notes. And, come exam time, students can binge-watch the entire canon of constitutional law in about twelve hours.
Download or read book The Fight to Vote written by Michael Waldman and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-01-18 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On cover, the word "right" has an x drawn over the letter "r" with the letter "f" above it.
Download or read book Citizens United written by Maryland. General Assembly. Department of Legislative Services. Office of Policy Analysis and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The United States Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United versus Federal Election Commission dramatically reshaped campaign finance law by empowering corporations and unions to spend unlimited amounts from their general treasuries for independent expenditures expressly supporting or opposing federal candidates. Congress and many state legislatures have responded to the decision by taking up legislation that would tighten disclosure requirements for corporate and union expenditures in election campaigns and would implement other reforms.
