Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

Here.

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So I'm eligible for affirmative-action programs?

To the Editor:

“The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court justice,” Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican majority leader, says. “Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president.”

What disrespect for the American majority that elected Barack Obama to be our president. Twice.

ELLEN STEINBAUM

Boston

Note from KBJ: The American people elected a Republican Senate (54 Republicans, 44 Democrats, two Independents) precisely to stop Obama. Ellen Steinbaum should think before she writes.

Note 2 from KBJ: The Committee on the Judiciary of the United States Senate has 11 Republican members and nine Democrat members.

The dissent says that when the Framers “constitutionalized the right to free speech in the First Amendment, it was the free speech of individual Americans that they had in mind.” Post, at 37. That is no doubt true. All the provisions of the Bill of Rights set forth the rights of individual men and women—not, for example, of trees or polar bears. But the individual person’s right to speak includes the right to speak in association with other individual persons. Surely the dissent does not believe that speech by the Republican Party or the Democratic Party can be censored because it is not the speech of “an individual American.” It is the speech of many individual Americans, who have associated in a common cause, giving the leadership of the party the right to speak on their behalf. The association of individuals in a business corporation is no different—or at least it cannot be denied the right to speak on the simplistic ground that it is not “an individual American.”

But to return to, and summarize, my principal point, which is the conformity of today’s opinion with the original meaning of the First Amendment. The Amendment is written in terms of “speech,” not speakers. Its text offers no foothold for excluding any category of speaker, from single individuals to partnerships of individuals, to unincorporated associations of individuals, to incorporated associations of individuals—and the dissent offers no evidence about the original meaning of the text to support any such exclusion. We are therefore simply left with the question whether the speech at issue in this case is “speech” covered by the First Amendment. No one says otherwise. A documentary film critical of a potential Presidential candidate is core political speech, and its nature as such does not change simply because it was funded by a corporation. Nor does the character of that funding produce any reduction whatever in the “inherent worth of the speech” and “its capacity for informing the public,” First Nat. Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, 435 U. S. 765, 777 (1978). Indeed, to exclude or impede corporate speech is to muzzle the principal agents of the modern free economy. We should celebrate rather than condemn the addition of this speech to the public debate.

(Antonin Scalia, Concurring, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310 [2010] [italics in original; footnote omitted])

All Four One (1982). An underestimated band. Martha Davis has a great voice. The guitar at 1:41 is heavenly, as is the saxophone that follows and the piano at the end. What memories! I was 25 years old and in law school when the song was released.

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The next president will get a Supreme Court appointment. There is no way that the Senate, as presently constituted, will allow Barack Obama to replace Justice Scalia.

Addendum: You can stay abreast of events at Bench Memos.

Addendum 2: If Obama wants to replace Scalia, he will have to nominate someone who is acceptable to many Republicans. Someone like this.

Addendum 3: Federal judge Richard A. Posner wasn't a fan of Scalia's.

To the Editor:

Re “Christie Ends Campaign After Poor Finish in Primary” (news article, Feb. 11):

Only two states have voted, yet six presidential candidates (Martin O’Malley, Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, Rand Paul, Chris Christie and Carly Fiorina) have ended or suspended their campaigns because of the results.

Why do the other 48 states allow Iowa and New Hampshire to always have [sic] the first say in presidential elections? Why shouldn’t the citizens of other states get similar make-or-break powers, taking turns being first?

Or we could have rotating regional primaries, perhaps with the Northeast voting first in 2020, the Southwest voting first in 2024, etc.

Anything is better than continually allowing the same two states to have a first-in-the-nation monopoly. If the national political parties don’t change the process, then Congress or the state legislatures should step in and make the system fair.

MATTHEW BARRY

Issaquah, Wash.

Note from KBJ: Or Matthew Barry could move to Iowa or New Hampshire and stop whining.