Naturalizing the Artificial Citizen: Repeating Lochner's Error in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission

摘要

In March, the Supreme Court of the United States, in a 5-4 vote, handed down Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, a sweeping rul-ing providing more protection for corporate political media spending as First Amendment "speech" than ever before. This article demon-strates that Citizens United nullified a century of democratic will by representing First Amendment protection for such spending to be part of nature rather than a legal construct. If Cass Sunstein's influential assessment is correct that the lesson of Lochner v. New York is the ju-dicial error inherent in imposing such artificial baselines to measure the constitutionality of government regulation, then Citizens United can be understood to repeat that error.