By Democracy 21 President Fred Wertheimer
Today's Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United case is a disaster for the American people and a dark day for the Supreme Court.
The decision will unleash unprecedented amounts of corporate "influence-seeking" money on our elections and create unprecedented opportunities for corporate "influence-buying" corruption.
Today's decision is the most radical and destructive campaign finance decision in Supreme Court history. In order to reach the decision, five justices abandoned longstanding judicial principles, judicial precedents and judicial restraint.
With the Citizens United opinion, Chief Justice Roberts has abandoned the illusory public commitments he made to "judicial modesty" and "respect for precedent" to cast the deciding vote for a radical decision that profoundly undermines our democracy.
In a stark choice between the right of American citizens to a government free from "influence-buying" corruption and the economic and political interests of American corporations, five Supreme Court Justices today came down in favor of American corporations.
With a stroke of the pen, five Justices wiped out a century of American history devoted to preventing corporate corruption of our democracy.
The radical nature of today's decision can be seen in the fact that the Court is overruling cases decided in 1990, 2003 and 2007, without any changed circumstances to justify these abrupt reversals.