Are supermajority votes in the Senate to pass all major legislation a good thing?

[Ted King]

I was able to track down some more information. As this article suggests, the Supreme Court is going to be making a ruling that may lead to problems at least as great as corporate lobbyists. That is, they may loosen the restriction on corporations (and, to be fair, unions and other large private party collectives) in influencing public elections by electioneering:

http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/corpgov/200...ate-power/

Business corporations and their owners have participated in political life in many ways for many years. Corporate lobbying, campaign contributions by business leaders, “soft money campaign support” by businesses, the “revolving door” of businessmen and public servants: these are only a few of the many ways that corporations interact with politicians and political institutions in an effort to influence public action to their advantage. The American public has learned to live with a strong connection between business and politics.

What is relatively new, however, is the claim that business entities have a constitutional right to utilize their economic power to participate in political campaigns and influence the outcome of public votes free of meaningful public regulation. The idea can be traced to the 1978 case of First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, 435 U.S. 765, where a 5 to 4 majority of the Court [1] voided a Massachusetts law that prohibited corporations from expending funds in connection with state referenda having nothing to do with their business on the ground it was an unconstitutional interference with corporate freedom of speech. In brief, Bellotti stands for the principle that corporations may spend money to influence the outcome of a public referendum regardless of whether the issue relates to the corporation’s business interests.

McCain-Feingold was immediately tested by a constitutional challenge in a suit by U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell that reached the Supreme Court in 2003. McConnell v. Federal Election Commission, 540 U. S. 93 (2003). McCain-Feingold survived the challenge; the Court’s decision held that corporate political speech in the form of “issue advertisements” that are the “functional equivalent” of “electioneering communications” can be legally banned without infringing any corporate constitutional rights of freedom of speech .

Citizens United may be the case that the Roberts majority has been waiting for. Since it is hard to imagine that a film about then-presidential candidate Hilary Clinton can “reasonably be interpreted as anything other than an ad urging the support or defeat of a candidate”, Citizens United is asking the Roberts Supreme Court to overrule McConnell and kill the “functional equivalent” rule that the Rehnquist Supreme Court crafted only 6 years ago.

The case was argued on March 23, 2009. During the argument it became apparent that some Supreme Court Justices may be thinking about the Citizens United case as an opportunity to strip away any meaningful restrictions on the ability of corporate America to participate in all aspects of the political process including the election of candidates for public office.[3]

This concern became more concrete when Chief Justice Roberts took the unusual step of setting the case for re-argument on September 9. The order for re-argument specifically invites the parties to address the issue of whether the McConnell or Austin precedents should be overruled, either in whole or in part. Enter judicial activism – of the conservative variety.