The Liberal Gun Club Forum

Several dozen law professors, legal scholars, former elected officials and prominent attorneys in private practice have signed onto an open letter calling for the passage of a constitutional amendment to overturn the heavily criticized Citizens United decision.

In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down Citizens United v. F.E.C., a ruling that struck down several provisions of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, typically known as McCain-Feingold.

Using a somewhat controversial First Amendment analysis, the high court’s conservative majority held: (1) the government cannot restrict the speech of state-created entities like corporations and non-profits or state-sanctioned entities such as unions; (2) that spending money is a form of free speech; and therefore (3) the government cannot limit spending in the political arena by such organizations.

The fallout from Citizens United, over the course of the past nine years, has unleashed roughly two billions dollars worth of outside corporate spending into the American political system. And, since the court revoked the centerpiece provisions of McCain-Feingold along ideological lines in 2010, nearly half of that total spending has come in the form of undisclosed and untraceable so-called “dark money.”

Against this backdrop of torrential cash, 50 legal luminaries have signed onto the open letter prepared for release on Constitution Day by a cross-partisan national organization that’s leading the current drive for a 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The list of names signing this letter was exclusively obtained by Law&Crime.

Initial signatories include Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe, Fordham Law Professor Zephyr Teachout, Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Lessig and former Federal Election Commission chair Trevor Potter, among multiple other high-profile jurists and legal luminaries from various partisan and ideological backgrounds.

Jeff Clements is the president of American Promise, the non-profit dedicated to overturning the ruling in Citizens United.

In an exclusive interview with Law&Crime, Clements described the current push to amend the nation’s founding charter as a timely and necessary change in line with the nation’s founding values.