Comments on: Does law lag behind science? Psychologists question Supreme Court campaign finance decision

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Situationism in the Blogosphere – January, Part I « The Situationist — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 02:55:06 +0000

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Wed, 03 Feb 2010 07:02:42 +0000

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By: Diane Levin

Diane Levin — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 14:34:57 +0000

Joe, thanks for your comment. BTW, the point of this post wasn’t to discuss or debate the legal merits of the Supreme Court’s decision. That wasn’t my purpose. It was to point to the reaction from psychologists who see a gap between jurisprudence and science. I have indeed read Justice Stevens’s masterfully eloquent and scholarly dissent, which I recommend to readers. I hadn’t seen your post, so thanks for the link.

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uberVU - social comments — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 13:47:37 +0000

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By: Joe Markowitz

Joe Markowitz — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 04:04:56 +0000

I’m not sure the Supreme Court would disagree that political ads do not influence people. In fact, being the good free market believers that a lot of them are, they would probably agree that advertisers would not spend money unless they believed that they were influencing people’s opinions by that spending. What these justices would instead say, I think, is that the first amendment does not permit the government to interfere with the free market of ideas, and that the legal remedy for influential speech in one direction is probably allowing more speech in other directions. The problem with their opinion is not that they do not accept the psychology of influence, but that they are not troubled by the distorting effects of allowing those with the most money to have the most influence. The problems with the opinion are legal problems, not psychological problems, as Justice Stevens of course does a beautiful job of pointing out. My additional comments are here: http://www.jcmarkowitz.com/2010/01/corporate-free-speech.html