Has The Supreme Court’s Citizens United Ruling Hamstrung U.S. Politics?

Recommendations to limit the role money plays in politics, made by New York’s briefly-convened anticorruption committee, fly directly in the face of what the Supreme Court deems a constitutional right – a situation that sums up the confused state of money, power and influence in current U.S. politics, Jill Lepore writes in a lengthy New Yorker piece. The Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, which found that corporations have rights and therefore their political spending is protected as speech under the First Amendment, undid a century of anti-corruption measures and established the twisted logic that rules political donations today, according to Lepore. The anti-corruption committee in itself is a good example of the problem: It was dismantled after just a few months, when it began examining Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who commissioned the committee and appointed its members. “There is quite possibly more money in American politics today than at any point in the country’s history,” Lepore writes, “But there is also less agreement than ever about what can or should be done about it.”