Video: 'The Story of Citizens United v. FEC'

(Thursday, January 21, 2010) — Overruling two important precedents about the First Amendment rights of corporations, a bitterly divided Supreme Court today ruled in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that the government may not ban political spending by corporations in candidate elections.

The 5-to-4 decision was a vindication, the majority said, of the First Amendment’s most basic free speech principle — that the government has no business regulating political speech.

The dissenters said that allowing corporate money to flood the political marketplace would corrupt democracy.