Yesterday, I told my students in Election Law that longstanding assumptions about campaign finance regulation might be turned upside down today. That appears to have happened. In a special session, the United States Supreme Court just issued its decision in Citizens United v. FEC, and it has apparently overruled prior cases upholding the use of corporate treasury funds for express advocacy of the election and defeat of candidates. More later.
One of my professional interests and charges is to follow the Wisconsin Supreme Court. About now, it’s a fascinating beat. Last month, the Capital Times covered the Court’s December 7 administrative conference. As Daniel Suhr pointed out on this blog, the article leaves a bit to be desired.
The article spends a great deal of time emphasizing the testiness that was on display during a public administrative conference held by the Court on December 7. That’s fine as far as it goes. The conference was certainly contentious and, at times, less than congenial. Part of that is due to the Court’s decision to hold its administrative conferences in public, thereby putting sausage making on display.
But it’s not just that. There have been many other indications of bad feeling on the Court, and that contention is not new. When the Chief Justice ran for reelection in 1999, a majority of the Court (crossing ideological divides) endorsed her opponent. That must have made for a few frosty decision conferences. The Court’s decisions and the concurrences and dissents of the individual justices have exhibited a certain heat for quite some time.
I do wish that the justices could find a way to dial down the heat that seems to characterize their deliberations.
I’ve mentioned a few times that I appreciate the writing of Jim Manzi on the question of climate change. He does a good job of cutting through to the fog to find what seems to me to be the most reasonable position on AGW.
So it doesn’t surprise me that Manzi has an interesting piece in the fantastic new journal National Affairs on the tension between policies promoting growth and those promoting social cohesion. You should read it all but one of the propositions is that, while liberals assume the material wealth that they seek to distribute without an adequate regard for the way in which redistributive policies will impede its production, conservatives assume the cohesion – I would prefer the word “social capital” – that the operation of markets and individualism promoted by capitalism can tend to undercut.
The conservative ascendancy was, in large part, as result of Democratic policies that either ignored the creation of wealth or believed that it was no longer possible. If conservatives are to avoid a liberal ascendancy, we need to think about cohesion and the importance that the benefits of growth – while they need not and probably cannot – be equally distributed, ought to be widely shared.
One of the things that brings to mind – and Manzi addresses it rather indirectly – is the extent to which the dichotomy between economic and social issues is a false one. One of the persistent causes of poverty is the deterioration of social capital in poor communities. There is a reason for many of the “judgmental” moral standards that have traditionally characterized American society.
The problem, it seems to me, is that we have lost our ability to discuss these things. The overriding memes of our generation – tolerance, equality and individualism – make it almost impossible to talk about anything but materialistic and reductionist responses to social problems.
Cross posted at Shark and Shepherd.