What the President Said

If you watched President Obama's State of the Union speech Wednesday, January 27, 2010, and if you heard the media commentary that came afterwards, you likely noticed that he criticized the soundness of a [pdf] decision - Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission [full text] -recently handed down by the United States Supreme Court. It was an uncomfortable, if not shocking, moment, because the Justices were sitting right in front of him when he did it.

The full context of the President's remarks were: "With all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests -- including foreign corporations -- to spend without limit in our elections. I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people. And I'd urge Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to correct some of these problems."

His administration defended his remarks. As reported by Reuters, White House spokesman Bill Burton said "One of the great things about our democracy is that powerful members of the government at high levels can disagree in public and in private. This is one of those cases."

The Questions Raised

While major media outlets have focused on the President's very public act of criticizing the Supreme Court during his State of the Union Address, most are not analyzing the accuracy of his remarks. Did the Supreme Court really reverse "a century of law"? Will their decision indeed open the flood gates for special interests and foreign corporations to spend "without limit in our elections"?

It is an understatement to say [pdf] Citizens United is packed with a dense analysis of First Amendment law, especially as that law relates to corporations. This is due, in part, to the fact that the Court encountered conflicting lines of case law: one line forbidding speech restrictions based on the speaker’s corporate identity and another line permitting them. So what, exactly did the court consider?

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