The decision by the Montana Supreme Court to uphold the ban on corporate cash in state elections is a stunner. It reads like the Supreme Court Justices have been watching the Dylan Ratigan Show. They talk about Massey Coal’s intervention in a judicial election, a “bought” judiciary, and they even throw in a Mark Twain quote. The court balances corporate rights to free speech with the corrupting influence of money on the court, and how that impacts citizens’ rights to due process.

The Montana Supreme Court is elected, but because of the state’s legal framework, the last election for Supreme Court Justice in 2008 cost merely $60,000. The whole opinion is worth reading.

“At that time the State of Montana and its government were operating under a mere shell of legal authority, and the real social and political power was wielded by powerful corporate managers to further their own business interests. The voters had more than enough of the corrupt practices and heavy-handed influence asserted by the special interests controlling Montana’s political institutions. Bribery of public officials and unlimited campaign spending by the mining interests were commonplace and well known to the public.”

And then there’s Mark Twain:

“Referring to W. A. Clark, but describing the general state of affairs in Montana, Mark Twain wrote in 1907 that Clark “is said to have bought legislatures and judges as other men buy food and raiment. By his example he has so excused and so sweetened corruption that in Montana it no longer has an offensive smell.”

This is just good writing.

“The question then, is when in the last 99 years did Montana lose the power or interest sufficient to support the statute, if it ever did. If the statute has worked to preserve a degree of political and social autonomy is the State required to throw away its protections because the shadowy backers of WTP seek to promote their interests? Does a state have to repeal or invalidate its murder prohibition if the homicide rate declines? We think not. Issues of corporate influence, sparse population, dependence upon agriculture and extractive resource development, location as a transportation corridor, and low campaign costs make Montana especially vulnerable to continued efforts of corporate control to the detriment of democracy and the republican form of government.”

The court also discussed the need to protect the judiciary.

“In the 2008 contested election for Chief Justice of the Montana Supreme Court, evidence presented by the State in the District Court indicated that the total expenditure for media advertising was about $60,000. It is clear that an entity like Massey Coal, willing to spend even hundreds of thousands of dollars, much less millions, on a Montana judicial election could effectively drown out all other voices.”

The court also discussed how campaign spending changes the nature of elections.

Studies of election spending in the United States show that the percentage of campaign contributions from individual voters drops sharply from 48% in states with restrictions on corporate spending to 23% in states without.

Fascinating.