The outstanding faculty award for the washington law reviews so he must be doing something right in the classroom and he also writes a weekly First Amendment news column for the concurring opinions blogger. Please welcome Ronald Collins [applause] jamie raskin, that is not a typo, that is how you spell his name. Egos by ginnie. I want to make sure theres no confusion about that. Graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College and harvard law school. They couldnt get into the university of virginia law school. He was also editor of the harvard law review. Jamie is professor of constitutional law at Washington College of law and state senator in maryland where he is majority whip of the center. He lead successful efforts to pass the Marriage Equality repeal. Just Marriage Equality. Lets be careful about that. Let me try is that again. Led the successful effort to pass the marriage ecology built repeal the desk at wiki comment aunt and ban assault weapons in the state of maryland. [applause] are you of plotting his achievements or the fact that i got it right . He is also a senior fellow at the people for the american way where he advises on matters of constitutional justice, freedom and political democracy has written dozens of essays and law review articles and several books including the 2003 Washington Post bestseller overruling democracy, the Supreme Court reverses the American People and lead the students which analyzed the Supreme Court decision affecting american students. He has appeared on National Television outlooks including that last word with lawrence macdonald, the ed show sean hannity and regular contributor to the nation and huffington post. Please join me in welcoming jamie raskin. [applause] my plan today is i am officially the moderator but i discovered in doing these things over time that you folks often have better questions than i have. I like to get things going but i am going to open this up to questions very early and keep the conversation going. If you have questions, raise your hand when i asked for the manned wait until we get somebody with a microphone to get to use so the people at home will be able to hear this. This is being recorded for charlottesville channel 10 which is a Great ServiceCommunity Access channel and cspans booktv. We are grateful to have them both here today. I would like to start things off with general questions to make sure we are all on the same page. The term Citizens United has become part of the american lexicon in the last few years and i would like to ask you if you could tell us what exactly is Citizens United . Let me thank you for inviting me to be part of this. I had to come to this festival because my sister erica published a novel called close and i had to come in and watch her talk so it was a free ride to talk about rons book too. So this was a water said watershed decision in 2010 which toppled to my mind two centuries of understanding what a corporation is. Go back to the Supreme Court decision in the the base in 1819 in the Dartmouth College case, John Marshall said incs is an artificial entity, invisible, intangible, existing only in contemplation of law and possessing only those rights conferred upon it by the charter of creation. That said an understanding that lasted until 2010 in Citizens United. A corporation is an economic entity that can be regulated by the people, it was a fantastic vehicle of wealth accumulation investment and activity but as Justice White put it in First National bank of boston the state need not permit its own creature to consume it. That was that a point when there was an assertion that corporations had political freespending rights. In 2010 five justice conservative majority on the Roberts Court reached out to ask a question that had not been opposed to it in Citizens United. It was the simple statutory question which was under the Mccain FeingoldBipartisan Campaign reform act, does of payperview movie, there was this anti Hillary Clinton movie made by the Citizens United group constitute a tv ad within the meaning of the Mccain Feingold legislation. All they had to state that the conservative group win was no, that was not what was contemplated in terms of the tv ad but the conservative majority, ordered the parties to go back into arguing a complete mean new question which was essentially do corporations have First Amendment political freespeech rights of the people and can they spend on an unlimited basis in our politics . And what the you know, after getting all the arguments back they decided that yes indeed, corporations are just as Justice Kennedy put it, an association of citizens just like you and me and any other. The ceos have the power to take whatever they want out of the Corporate Treasury to spend in politics. Before Citizens United the corporate voice as Justice Stevens put it was hardly missing from our politics because they could spend all the money they wanted and the ceos could spend all their money and corporations could create Political Action committees but those had to actually get individual contributions from real human beings so in the 2008 cycle exxon mobil had a pack which raise 1 million which is not chump change which they were able to put into campaigns across the country but Citizens United had been in place in 2008 the ceo of exxon mobile could have reached into the Corporate Treasury and taken out essentially what everyone did. The company had 87 billion in corporate profits in that cycle so if they had taken out a modest 10 of just their profits they did spend 8. 7 billion which was more than was spent by the Obama Campaign or the Mccain Campaign and every federal candidates 10 of the profits of one fortune 500 company. The court declared that this was what the constitution means, corporations can spend whatever they want and with predictable results. In the next election cycle in 2010 when the major question of the campaign should have been the bp oil spill which destroyed an entire ecosystem in the gulf of mexico or the collapsing coal mines in west or the trillion dollar meltdown of the mortgage industry which destroyed lots of peoples jobs, homes when that should have been the issue, instead the infusion of corporate money made the question in the 2010 Congressional Campaign corporate deregulation and how important it is to deregulate business in america and we saw the triumph of the tea party and since then we have seen everincreasing spending on the super pacs dark muddy rivers flowing in for a 501 c 46 organizations because it the Citizens United opinion which was again 54, deeply divided and continuing huge majorities of the American People reject this proposition that corporations should be treated like citizens, like people. There continues to be majority support for constitutional amendment, democrats brought it up on a partyline vote. Citizens united, the governing dogmas of the time which are money is speech and corporations are people and now we are trying to work out other statutory ways to fight that. But this is the big question of our time. Are we going to be able to find a way to reclaim democratic momentum, all the momentum we had from the civilizing movement of the last century, the civil rights movement, Labor Movement the of we going to allow corporations to govern . I am speaking as someone who wants corporations to profit, prosper, thrive but not govern. That belongs to the people under our constitution. [applause] was there anything you would like to respond to . I concur in part and dissenting in part. Thank you, josh and thanks to the Thomas Jefferson center. Thank you for all the wonderful First Amendment work you do, sometimes at the risk of being criticized but for those of us we value the contributions. The reason i have to concur in part and dissenting in part is because it is a very complicated issue. When money speaks, the book i coauthored with michael leather and friend we made a concerted effort to let others decide to be absolutely balanced, not balance in the fox news sense but balance in the definition, dictionary definitions cents. We try to present both sides as best we could so if you look through and try to discern exactly what our position is, good luck. The reason we did that is because this is a very complicated issue. It is one the world is not divided liberal conservative. I take great pride in being affiliated with the Legal Aid Foundation in los angeles, so well continued to defending his role as a member of the state legislature. I daresay there are few things we disagree on and on want to talk about more about his possible bid for congressional seat. Last i heard in the Washington Post your children approved it, your friends approved it on the table. Won a family primary. He is in our to strict so i definitely have some questions i would like to ask but i must say as someone who has done work on the American Civil Liberties union, i take a back seat to no one when it comes to being liberal. I do not think our current president is a liberal by my standards. He is too separate from my decision. I dont see fit and the fat cat monopolist that jamie raskin rails against and as anyone who defends dissent in america i am pleased and happy there are folks like ginnie taking the positions he does. That said, i am very concerned about Civil Liberties in america. I am very concerned about our First Amendment. Just before i came here when i left home i received a letter from the Southern Poverty Law Center asking me to contribute. It is a wonderful organization, one of the top organizations in this country that fight racism and bigotry i am happy to support it and i urge you to support it. Why am i saying that . Money isnt speech, ladies and gentlemen but money facilitates speech. I believe in this cause enough to put my money where my mouth is and i urge you to do likewise and that points to a very important issue and that is in a highly capitalist culture, make of it what you will, money is very much a part of who we are and what we do. From my state, i prefer the measure of free speech liberty we have in the United States over that of many socialist countries. Are there many things in the socialist countries thats because its my ideals . Certainly. In terms of free speech i am glad to be an american citizen and glad to receive the benefits of that. Lets talk about corporations. Jamie did an excellent job describing i agree with you, the way the court should have disclosed it on the grounds that Theodore Olson argued. He is a concern and conservative and his main argument was for this case to have been decided instead to join grounds. Wont get into the technicalities but i agree with that and i think actually the Elections Commission got it wrong in the first place, they should have allowed the documentary. After all what we had was i dont think you mentioned it, Citizens United is a Nonprofit Corporation just like the Thomas Jefferson center, just like the American Civil Liberties union, just as the National Association for the advancement of colored people, ladies and gentlemen, those are all corporations so if you want to diminish or reneged on their rights of corporations think what that would do to planned parenthood, 6 states in the midwest if they could come after planned parenthood because planned parenthood is a corporate entity, didnt have First Amendment protection. I have a question for jamie if i may. Genie is the senior fellow at people for the american way correct . Like a lot of other non profits received a lot of money from corporate entities including large amounts of money from the service foundation. I at no problem with that. That is fine. I wish people for the american way disclosed that on its web site but i researched it and it is available. I urge them to put that sort of information on there website, transparency is a wonderful virtue but lets say that ted cruz not even jewish. That is how bad it is. Saying anyway. Lets say ted cruz is the nominee for the republicans. And lets say we are outraged by this and say people for the american way which receives money from other corporations decides they want to make a documentary critical of him and to air during the election. Wonderful. I am all for that. I would give my money, tell them if they do that documentary, my check is ready to go. They want to air the documentary in the election and they want something else. They want jamie, they wont pay him for it. They want him to write a book. Do you know that under the dissenting views in the very case that he criticized, dissenting views of the case he supported, people for the american way, it would be a federal crime to air that documentary and it would be a crime as evidenced by the oral arguments that elena kagan and previous assistant solicitor general seated all arguments and i have the transcripts ready to read it if we have any doubt of that conceded that a book could be regulated. To me as someone who believes firmly in the First Amendment, ladies and gentlemen, this is the nightmare scenario. Regulating planned parenthood and depriving it of its First Amendment and equal protection and Due Process Rights is a nightmare and that is why part of why i dont come to defend the fat cats. What i am saying is i am very worried, i will get to the constitutional amendment later, lawyers say again our bill of rights has never been amended. How dare anyone call for that . Was behind jamie at the Judiciary Committee that pushed for that and more than what was being proposed and we will get to that in a moment but this is my concern, that sometimes, ladies and gentlemen, the queue or kills the patient. That, as a liberal someone who defensible liberties i simply cannot abide. I am sure you dont have anything you want to say in response. We still have 40 minutes. I think i will take the task of allowing you to respond to that. Lets start with this because we are sponsored by the Thomas Jefferson center and we are here in beautiful charlottesville and jefferson wrote in his famous letter that our First Amendment create a wall of separation between church and state. What is the church other than a religious corporation . That is what a church is. That created the model the templates for what progressives and populous and liberals tried to do a century ago in the Dirksen SenateOffice Building 0th century. I would be interested in rons position. The delmack has been law since 1907 saying that corporations may not give money to federal candidates. Corp. Is just a person and taking the corporations political freespeech rights away would deprive all of us of our First Amendment rights that would be unconstitutional and corporations could put money directly into federal campaigns. For more than a century we have tried to create a wall of separation in jeffersonian terms between Corporate Treasury wealth and Free Democratic erection which belong to the people. It doesnt mean Corporate Executives and employees and boards of directors cant vote or put their own money in it means you cant take money from the Corporate Treasury. Chief Justice Rehnquist to give you a sense how far right this court is, said in 1978 that for corporations and artificial entities in doubt with all kinds of special privileges, limited liability to shareholders, perpetual life of the company, favorable treatment of assets and so on and of vehicle for wealth maximization and accumulation in investment but poses special dangers when it comes to the politi