A Concord attorney is raising an alarm about the influence of corporate profits in the political process, and wants to overturn the year-old Supreme Court decision, the so-called Citizens United case, that gave corporations free rein to influence public elections.

Jeff Clements spoke at the Village University class on the U.S. Constitution given by Janet Beyer. The Citizens United case, Beyer said, has become Clements' "passion." The 2010 decision struck down the McCain Feingold campaign finance law that put restrictions on corporate influence in political campaigns. McCain Feingold was a bipartisan effort, Clements said, with both Democrats and Republicans voting for it.

But a year ago, Clements said, the Supreme Court overturned that law in favor of unlimited corporate money to influence elections. Clements said Justices Sam Alito and John Roberts were the prime movers in hearing the case. He said Citizens United is a nonprofit Virginia organization that wanted to run an unflattering movie about then-candidate Hillary Clinton in 2008, called, "Hillary." It was a biased work which, the organization hoped, would turn voters against Clinton.

"It was a feature length political ad," said Clements. The courts said that because the movie/ad was a political advocacy against a candidate, the McCain-Feingold Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act ban on corporate money to pay for and distribute the ad applied, Clements said. People who wanted to advocate against Hillary Clinton, even with the movie/ad were free to do it. They just couldn't do it with corporate money within 60 days of the election.

But the two Bush appointees wanted to take the case, and eventually in a 5-4 vote, long after the election and any impact the movie may have had, the justices voted that corporate money could be deemed speech and must be kept free.

Clements said Justice John Paul Stevens, in his dissent, wrote eloquently about the principles the law was dismantling. Clements said Stevens' dissent was 90-pages long, "but well worth reading."

"It was his last message to the people," said Clements. He said Stevens, a Republican appointee, was "hardly a lefty," but wrote that corporations are not people deserving of free speech. "The decision was a radical departure from the first amendment law," said Clements. He said Justice Kennedy, in the majority, said corporate money was a form of speech and should be free of Congressional regulation.