Citizens United ruling only the beginning of speech debate
12:10 AM 01/28/2010
Prior to the Supreme Court’s decision last week in Citizens United v. FEC, Jefferson Smith, Jimmy Stewart’s archetypal hero who arrived in our nation’s capital to take on the special interests, may never have made it to Washington. The film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, after all, was speech funded by a corporation. As pointed out by Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the court’s majority in Citizens United, some officials at the time discouraged the film’s distribution because they did not like its criticism of Congress. Under prior precedent governing our campaign finance laws, such officials could have gone even farther and banned the film outright.
