Paul Sherman Profile picture
Senior Attorney @IJ (opinions are my own). I tweet about the First Amendment, constitutional law, and chess (username psherman31 @chesscom and @lichess)
Oct 31, 2023 22 tweets 4 min read
Hawley apparently plans to introduce a "bill reversing Citizens United." Such a bill would be unconstitutional, so this is just populist nonsense. But it's worth pointing out that basically everything he believes about Citizens United is wrong.🧵

realclearpolitics.com/articles/2023/… First of all, before Citizens United was decided, the rule that it announced--that corporations can spend money on electoral advocacy--was already the rule in a majority of American states. There's no evidence those states were more corrupt or less well governed than the minority
Oct 4, 2023 16 tweets 3 min read
SCOTUS is not broadly libertarian, but one notable exception is its First Amendment jurisprudence, which has become MUCH more libertarian over the past 30 years. It's no exaggeration to say that the current Court's fundamental theory of the 1st Amend. is libertarian. 🧵 This is in contrast with earlier theories of the First Amendment, which were focused more on the instrumental value of speech for democratic self-governance. These theories were championed by Alexander Meikeljohn, Robert Bork, and, more recently, Robert Post.