WELCOME to the debut of “The Truth Is!”, a blog of reporting and commentary that aims to be informative, thoughtful and provocative. At least initially, the blog will have a strong heartland flavor by virtue of the connection of a number of us to Cowles family journalism. I am former editor of the Des Moines Register’s opinion pages. Another contributor, Michael Gartner, is former editor of the paper; he later served as president of NBC News. Another former Register editor who has agreed to contribute, Geneva Overholser, is director of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg school of journalism. Followers of the blog will have access also to the work of Herbert Strentz of Des Moines, a close Register and other newspaper watcher who once headed Drake University’s journalism school. Bill Leonard, a longtime Register editorial writer, will add insights.

“The Truth Is!” will be supervised by my daughter, Marcia Wolff, a communications lawyer for 20 years with Arnold and Porter (Washington, D.C.). Invaluable technical assistance in assembling and maintaining the blog is provided by my grandsons Julian Cranberg, a college first-year, and Daniel Wolff, a high school senior.

If you detect a whiff of nepotism in this operation, so be it. All of it is strictly a labor of love. —Gil Cranberg

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Gilbert Cranberg: A SHODDY HIGH COURT RULING

Some court cases have become so embedded in the public’s consciousness that you know immediately from the title what the issue is. Thus, almost everyone identifies Roe v. Wade with abortion. Increasingly, so, too, has “Citizens United” become shorthand for free speech rights of corporations and unions as well as the role of money in politics.

A recent book also could make “Citizens United” synonymous with a Supreme Court ruling that is grievously mistaken. The book, “Too Much Free Speech?” (University of Illinois Press), is by Randall P. Bezanson, a First Amendment scholar at the University of Iowa law school.

Here is Bezanson’s unsparing take on the high court’s 5-4 majority opinion: “… there is good reason to find it logically wanting, historically and textually arid, given to grand and broad statements of law and ultimately dissatisfying. The Court’s opinion never really gets to the substance of the corporate speech issue, instead escaping the need to grapple with text and history and theory by what proved to be a weak and unconvincing expedient of claiming that the decision had already been made in many Supreme Court decisions….With all respect, nothing could be further from the truth.”

Bezanson is not given to overstatement. I know him and his work well, having coauthored two books and several articles with him. He is a careful and painstaking scholar who knows the Supreme Court from the inside, having clerked for Justice Harry Blackmun. If Bezanson denounces the high court ruling in Citizens United as shoddy, as he essentially does, the critique has to be taken seriously.

He could have sensationalized his attack on the ruling by denouncing its reliance on a law student’s work. At one point, the high court’s opinion in Citizens United cited a student’s law review article as support for a particular point. Bezanson noted the reference but didn’t make much of a deal about it. In fact, he praised the student’s effort as “a quite nicely argued piece of scholarship.”

The same can be said for Randall Bezanson’s important book.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Hey Gil, long time no talk. Send me your contact info when you have a moment. dmastio - at - usatoday -dot- com.