I leave you this fine evening with a blog post by Ronald Dworkin. Just to show you how disingenuous Dworkin is, I hereby reproduce his first paragraph, with my insertions in brackets:
Against the opposition of their four colleagues, five right-wing Supreme Court justices [why are the others not referred to as "left-wing"?] have now guaranteed that big corporations [and labor unions, and trial lawyers, and the abortion industry! why did Dworkin omit these?] can spend unlimited funds on political advertising in any political election. [Actually, what the Court did was rule that the First Amendment prevents Congress from abridging speech. They didn't "guarantee" anything.] In an opinion written by Justice Anthony Kennedy and joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas, the Court overruled established precedents [could there be an unestablished precedent? note the rhetorical mileage Dworkin is trying to get out of this redundancy] and declared dozens of national and state statutes unconstitutional [like Roe v. Wade, which Dworkin celebrates], including the McCain-Feingold Act, which forbade corporate or union television advertising that endorses or opposes a particular candidate.
Maimon Schwarzschild once referred to Dworkin's "relentless spin." Indeed. It is tiresome.
Addendum: Dworkin says that corporations are "legal fictions." He's wrong. Corporations are legal persons. They can own property, enter into contracts, and even break criminal laws. They have legal rights and responsibilities. Does Dworkin believe that corporations such as the New York Times do not have a First Amendment right to freedom of the press? Why would a corporation have a right to freedom of the press but not a right to freedom of speech? It makes you wonder whether Dworkin thinks before he writes.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 