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What will be the tally in Citizens United?
Published on November 23, 2009 04:31 PM
Category: Enforcement, Jurisprudence & Litigation
At FantasyScotus.net, they're predicting the outcome of Citizens United v. FEC, known colloquially in many areas as the "Hillary Movie case." Sixty-seven percent of the fantasy "10th Justices" are predicting that the Supreme Court will reverse the Court of Appeals and uphold the right of Citizens United to air its movie and ads.
Overwhelmingly, the most common prediction is for a 5-4 vote overturning the lower court, as you can see below. This strikes me as incorrect. My guess is that the judgment will be at least 7-2 to overturn the lower court, and quite likely 9-0. However, the way the Court gets there will be much tighter, and it is quite likely that the key decision — whether to overturn Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce — will be a 5-4 tally. But I'd be surprised if more than Stevens and maybe Ginsburg were prepared to rule that the government could censor this film. My guess is that the liberal judges (Ginsburg, Breyer, Stevens, and Sotomayor) will argue that film is exempt under the press exemption in the statute, or under Wisconsin Right to Life II, or some other narrow ground.
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