Citizens United: Affirming Government Can’t Ban Speech

January 1, 2018  •  By IFS Staff  •    •  

Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission is a 2010 Supreme Court decision that restored some of the First Amendment rights of corporations and unions that had been restricted under the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002. The case was brought by Citizens United, a nonprofit organization that wished to advertise and distribute a documentary film critical of Hillary Clinton in…

Highlights of First Amendment-Related Exchanges Between Judge Barrett and Senate Judiciary Committee Members

The Institute for Free Speech reviewed transcripts of Judge Barrett’s answers to questions from members of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee during days two ...

Has Citizens United Increased Corruption? An Examination of Public Corruption Prosecutions

September 3, 2020   •  By Alec Greven   •  , , ,

Ten years after the Citizens United decision, this report asks if opponents' claims that increased speech through independent expenditures would lead to increased corruption ...

Campaign-Finance Laws Created Candidate Bloomberg

February 24, 2020   •  By Brad Smith   •  , , ,

This piece, co-authored with John R. Lott Jr., originally appeared in the Wall Street Journal on February 24, 2020.    House Democrats held a ...

Testimony of Bradley A. Smith Before the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties

February 5, 2020   •  By Brad Smith   •  , ,

Hyperbole and charged rhetoric aside, what was Citizens United actually about? Quite simply, on January 21, 2010, the Supreme Court struck down a law ...

Why Citizens United should not be blamed for climate policy failures

January 31, 2020   •  By Alex Baiocco   •  ,

This piece originally appeared in The Hill on January 31, 2020.   Can voters handle exposure to unfettered speech? Some politicians will say the ...

Celebrate the Citizens United Decade

January 21, 2020   •  By Brad Smith   •  , ,

This piece originally appeared in The Wall Street Journal on January 20, 2020.   ‘Last week,” President Obama declared a decade ago, “the Supreme Court ...

Citizens United After 10 Years: More Speech, Better Democracy

January 16, 2020   •  By Scott Blackburn   •  ,

On January 21, 2010, the Supreme Court struck down a federal law in Citizens United that prohibited corporations and labor unions from independently voicing ...

Seattle Moves To Silence Dissent From Corporations

January 15, 2020   •  By Eric Wang   •  , , ,

This piece originally appeared in Daily Caller on January 15, 2020.   When government seeks to enact laws that harm your interests, should you ...

No: Government shouldn’t dictate views we’re allowed to hear

May 9, 2019   •  By Brad Smith   •  , ,

Can the government ban political speech based on the identity of the speaker, or the mechanism that the speaker uses to communicate to fellow ...

Senate Democrats Exercise Their First Amendment Right to Demonize Americans Exercising Their First Amendment Rights

April 5, 2019   •  By Alex Baiocco   •  , , ,

Last week, Senate Democrats introduced their companion bill to the House’s recently passed H.R. 1, also known misleadingly as the “For the People Act.” ...

Load more