This is one of the SCOTUS ruling's weakest points, and the one where liberals will be in agreement with many conservatives:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0110/31845.htmlBy JOSH GERSTEIN | 1/21/10 11:33 PM EST
Thursday's Supreme Court ruling clearing the way for corporations and unions to spend money in U.S. political campaigns will allow foreigners a greater role in American elections and could lead to a flood of foreign money into the system, analysts said.
On its face, the 5-4 ruling appears to permit the U.S. subsidiaries of foreign companies to take out or support ads for or against candidates, just as other U.S. corporations may now do.
In other words, even if Sony Corp. in Japan couldn’t spend money directly for or against a candidate, the electronics company’s American-based subsidiaries could. And that’s got some conservatives upset, fearful of the influence of foreign money on U.S. politics.
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Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion suggests there could be an argument for “limiting foreign influence over our political process,” but he concludes that is not an adequate reason to allow the government to impose an across-the-board ban on direct expenditures by corporations in campaigns.
However, the main dissent, authored by Justice John Paul Stevens, argues that the majority’s logic throws into question existing federal bans on political activity by foreigners.
“If taken seriously, our colleagues’ assumption that the identity of a speaker has no relevance to the Government’s ability to regulate political speech would lead to some remarkable conclusions. Such an assumption would have accorded the propaganda broadcasts to our troops by ‘Tokyo Rose’ during World War II the same protection as speech by Allied commanders,” Stevens wrote. “More pertinently, it would appear to afford the same protection to multinational corporations controlled by foreigners as to individual Americans.”
In an apparent dig at the originalists in the majority, Stevens said throwing U.S. political campaigns open to foreigners would have upset the Founding Fathers. “The notion that Congress might lack the authority to distinguish foreigners from citizens in the regulation of electioneering would certainly have surprised the Framers, whose ‘obsession with foreign influence derived from a fear that foreign powers and individuals had no basic investment in the well-being of the country,’” Stevens wrote, quoting a law review article from Fordham professor Zephyr Teachout.
Stevens also suggested some of his colleagues were refusing to address the green light the opinion could give to political activity by huge global enterprises. “The majority never uses a multinational business corporation in its hypotheticals,” the justice wrote.
Another possibility raised by Thursday’s ruling is that wealthy foreigners, who are currently banned by statute from spending “directly or indirectly” on U.S. elections, might start corporations in the U.S. solely or primary to funnel money in to spend on U.S. elections.
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Couldn't the SCOTUS majority's ruling creating a system that would allow such easy interference in US elections by foreign corporations and individuals be interpreted as a form of treason, and grounds for impeaching them? Justice Kennedy's majority opinion makes it clear they were well aware of the possibility of such influence resulting from their ruling.
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