高法判决重挫美国民主纽约时报社论部 文 李雅靖 译

chrisxsy

联邦最高法院5比4的裁决是灾难性的，将美国政治推入19世纪的镀金时代。法院的保守派多数骗人有术，挥舞宪法第一修正案的大旗，为商业公司用其巨额财富左右选举并要挟当选者为其服务大开方便之门。（相关链接：柏蔚林：美国选举制度发生重大变化 ）
这一裁决是对美国民主制度的致命打击，因此国会务必立刻采取行动以减少这一裁决可能造成的破坏。
本周四高法裁决的结果使得商业公司摆脱了近一个世纪它们不能直接花钱介入政治竞选的禁令。眼下，商业公司可以随心所欲地用现金支持或击败候选人。如果一位国会议员站到一个特种利益集团的对立面，后者的游说人现在可以威胁说：我们会调用一切资源将你拉下马。
高法对联合公民对联邦选举委员会案（Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission）的裁决否决了业已建立的法律体系，侵蚀了矗立了整整一个世纪的商业公司与选举政治之间的大墙。（此项裁决同时允许工会为竞选花钱，尽管工会手头可支配的数额少得可怜）。
我们的国父曾经警告我们商业影响政治的危害。他们制定的宪法中提到不少群体并赋予它们权利和保护：人民、民兵、媒体以及宗教信仰，但并未提及商业公司。
1907年，商业公司的财富与权力又创新高。其时，国会表述了它对商业团体与竞选活动之间的关系：企业不能向竞选者提供赞助。上世纪中期，国会又扩大了这一禁令覆盖的范围。这一法规在过去几十年了经受了一系列挑战，直到本周四被高法废黜。
这一个案子本不该由高法裁决。但大法官们手伸得很长，抓住了一个案子就不放松，这个本身案涉及2008年大选中一部攻击希拉里?罗德汉姆?克林顿的宣传片中的一个技术性的枝节问题。然而，高法将对此案的斟酌提升为对是否废黜禁止商业公司赞助竞选的法律的讨论，并以迅雷不及掩耳的速度安排听证。高法只给律师们一个月的时间为如此繁复的案子准备辩词，并在自己的假期期间安排了辩论时间。
首席大法官小约翰·罗伯特在提名听证时说他会履行司法无谓的原则（judicially modest），[象棒球裁判一样]仅仅判定是坏球（balls）还是一击（strikes）。他无疑知道高法这次的行为与他听证时的表述大相径庭，因此专门写了一份意见，为高法不知羞耻的行为辩护。
高法多数派在法律面前出现重大失误，其中最为恶劣的错误是判定商业公司与人民一样享有宪法第一修正案的保护。这一观点极为牵强附会，因为商业公司是由州政府成立的赚钱的机构，为了更好地盈利，它们被赋予包括不同税率在内的多种特殊的权利。认定这些人为建立的法律实体与必须对候选人表达自己的意见的公民拥有同样的权利是对宪法的根本性误读。
此外，高法的多数派还可笑地宣称，与目前仍被禁止的对竞选活动的直接捐款有所不同，公司在这一方面的独立花销“不构成任何腐败或给人以滋生腐败的印象”。如果华尔街的银行家们告诉国会议员他们打算花数百万美元在选举中击败任何反对政府救市决定的议员，并且他们确实这么做了，这看上去自然就是腐败。
在高法对此案进行听证后，参议员约翰?麦凯恩告诉记者，一些法官对特殊利益群体的现金影响国会立法的作用的认识“极端天真”，让他感到惴惴不安。
持不同意见的法官约翰?保罗?史蒂文斯警告说，这一裁决不仅威胁到民主，而且“恐怕将对高法本身构成伤害”。历史很有可能会对这一裁决和做出这一裁决的法院做出极为严厉的评判。高法对公民联合会案的裁决很可能会被看作是继布什对戈尔选案（指2000年大选两位候选人没有获得联邦选举委员会多数票之后的官司）之后的又一次令人耻辱的判决。那一次，高法的保守派以5票对4票的裁决禁止继续清点有效选票，以保证一位保守候选人当选总统。这次，同样保守的法官为了使共和党侯选人在今后的竞选中拥有巨大的优势再一次破坏了美国的政治制度。
国会以及关心公平竞选与廉洁政府的公众需要立即动员起来，奥巴马总统说他将亲自参与这一运动。国会应完善总统竞选募捐规定，并为国会竞选也设立一套捐赠制度，从而帮助普通美国人为竞选捐款。国会还应该颁布一项法律，规定上市公司在为政治竞选花钱之前必须先获得其股东的同意。
上述每一举措固然都很关键，但依然不够。真正的解决办法在于推翻高法的裁决。有四位持异议的法官在他们的声明里已经雄辩地说明为什么这个裁决在法律上是错误和危险的。他们需再拿到一张票才可以拯救岌岌可危的民主。

英文原文：


January 22, 2010
Editorial
The Court’s Blow to Democracy
With a single, disastrous 5-to-4 ruling, the Supreme Court has thrust politics back to the robber-baron era of the 19th century. Disingenuously waving the flag of the First Amendment, the court’s conservative majority has paved the way for corporations to use their vast treasuries to overwhelm elections and intimidate elected officials into doing their bidding.
Congress must act immediately to limit the damage of this radical decision, which strikes at the heart of democracy.
As a result of Thursday’s ruling, corporations have been unleashed from the longstanding ban against their spending directly on political campaigns and will be free to spend as much money as they want to elect and defeat candidates. If a member of Congress tries to stand up to a wealthy special interest, its lobbyists can credibly threaten: We’ll spend whatever it takes to defeat you.
The ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission radically reverses well-established law and erodes a wall that has stood for a century between corporations and electoral politics. (The ruling also frees up labor unions to spend, though they have far less money at their disposal.)
The founders of this nation warned about the dangers of corporate influence. The Constitution they wrote mentions many things and assigns them rights and protections — the people, militias, the press, religions. But it does not mention corporations.

In 1907, as corporations reached new heights of wealth and power, Congress made its views of the relationship between corporations and campaigning clear: It banned them from contributing to candidates. At midcentury, it enacted the broader ban on spending that was repeatedly reaffirmed over the decades until it was struck down on Thursday.
This issue should never have been before the court. The justices overreached and seized on a case involving a narrower, technical question involving the broadcast of a movie that attacked Hillary Rodham Clinton during the 2008 campaign. The court elevated that case to a forum for striking down the entire ban on corporate spending and then rushed the process of hearing the case at breakneck speed. It gave lawyers a month to prepare briefs on an issue of enormous complexity, and it scheduled arguments during its vacation.
Chief Justice John Roberts Jr., no doubt aware of how sharply these actions clash with his confirmation-time vow to be judicially modest and simply “call balls and strikes,” wrote a separate opinion trying to excuse the shameless judicial overreaching.
The majority is deeply wrong on the law. Most wrongheaded of all is its insistence that corporations are just like people and entitled to the same First Amendment rights. It is an odd claim since companies are creations of the state that exist to make money. They are given special privileges, including different tax rates, to do just that. It was a fundamental misreading of the Constitution to say that these artificial legal constructs have the same right to spend money on politics as ordinary Americans have to speak out in support of a candidate.
The majority also makes the nonsensical claim that, unlike campaign contributions, which are still prohibited, independent expenditures by corporations “do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.” If Wall Street bankers told members of Congress that they would spend millions of dollars to defeat anyone who opposed their bailout, and then did so, it would certainly look corrupt.
After the court heard the case, Senator John McCain told reporters that he was troubled by the “extreme na?veté” some of the justices showed about the role of special-interest money in Congressional lawmaking.
In dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens warned that the ruling not only threatens democracy but “will, I fear, do damage to this institution.” History is, indeed, likely to look harshly not only on the decision but the court that delivered it. The Citizens United ruling is likely to be viewed as a shameful bookend to Bush v. Gore. With one 5-to-4 decision, the court’s conservative majority stopped valid votes from being counted to ensure the election of a conservative president. Now a similar conservative majority has distorted the political system to ensure that Republican candidates will be at an enormous advantage in future elections.
Congress and members of the public who care about fair elections and clean government need to mobilize right away, a cause President Obama has said he would join. Congress should repair the presidential public finance system and create another one for Congressional elections to help ordinary Americans contribute to campaigns. It should also enact a law requiring publicly traded corporations to get the approval of their shareholders before spending on political campaigns.
These would be important steps, but they would not be enough. The real solution lies in getting the court’s ruling overturned. The four dissenters made an eloquent case for why the decision was wrong on the law and dangerous. With one more vote, they could rescue democracy.
(转载本文请注明“中国选举与治理网”首发)