While fund-raising public interest organizations have been beating drums for a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United, no constitutional amendment is needed because the Constitution already has provisions that allow Congress and the states to overturn Citizens United with ordinary legislation. One of those provisions states:
"the Supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction " with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make. (US Constitution, Article III, Section 2, Clause 2, Sentence 2) (emphasis added). The revolutionaries who overthrew rule by the British Empire--and who then carefully wrote the Constitution to protect their new republic against tyranny--provided the simple and now well-settled means in the "Exceptions Clause" to restrain a Supreme Court that encroaches on congressional power. The Framers anticipated the problem... |