In his State of the Union Address, President Barack Obama declared, “Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests—including foreign corporations—to spend without limit in our elections. Well, 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 that’s why I’m urging Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to right this wrong.”  Much has been said about the appropriateness of such a public chastisement of our nation’s highest tribunal, but these remarks undoubtedly echo a common concern about the recent decision in Citizens United, namely that our electoral process will become less democratic. The New York Times explicitly said so in an editorial titled “The Court’s Blow to Democracy,” writing, “With a single, disastrous 5-to-4 ruling, the Supreme Court has thrust politics back to the robber-baron era of the 19th century.” It concluded: “The four dissenters made an eloquent case for why the decision is wrong on the law and dangerous. With one more vote, they could rescue democracy.”  Prominent legal professors raised similar concerns, such as Harvard’s Lawrence Lessig, who asks “Who could doubt that this will further distract members of Congress from what their constituents want?” Erwin Chemerinsky, known to most 1Ls as the author of the highly popular study guide Constitutional Law: Principles and Practice, wrote in the Los Angeles Times that “[t]here is no way to see this other than as the conservative justices using judicial review to advance the traditional conservative agenda.”

Yet, a January 2010 Gallup poll suggests that if put to a vote—and what could be more democratic?—Americans would have decided Citizens United as did the Supreme Court. According to the poll, 57 percent of Americans believe giving money to political candidates is free speech protected by the First Amendment. Fifty-five percent believe that the same campaign finance laws applying to individuals should also apply to corporations and unions. These results are surprising considering the populist backlash against big government and the banking industry. What’s even more surprising is that there is uniformity across party lines: as to whether campaign contributions are free speech, 62 percent of democrats and 64 percent of republicans say yes (this drops to 48 percent for independents). How does one reconcile these polling numbers with the criticisms? How can a decision be both harmful to democracy but popularly supported?

Scanning the internet for reactions to Citizens United, I came across a blog on the Huffington Post by singer/actress Barbra Streisand who lamented “I felt like I was in suspended animation as I read the Supreme Court decision which essentially enables a corporate coup d’état of America’s Democracy.”  Why anyone would care for Steisand’s legal opinion is beyond me, but it is very revealing all the same. When distinguished legal professors and the New York Times begin to sound like Hollywood political activists (which unfortunately happens far too often), it says to me that these criticisms are not honest opinions about a Supreme Court decision.

Granting corporations greater freedom of speech does not clash with democratic ideals, but it does challenge a fundamental tenet of liberal ideology: that corporations, motivated by a desire for profit, are inherently evil. In rejecting this idea, Citizens United has brought upon it the full wrath of the left-wing establishment.