新SAT写作考试阅读精选材料推荐三（政治话题）

北京sat培训,sat备考资料,sat网课,sat培训机构,sat保分班,sat真题

本文为大家推荐的是来源于Vanity Fair的一篇文章——Did the Supreme Court Make the Right Decision

in the Citizens United Case After All?作者是 Michael Kinsley.

文章内容：

Did the Supreme Court Make the Right Decision in the Citizens United Case

After All?

By Michael Kinsley

Few Supreme Court decisions have been memorable—and even fewer have been

notoriously wrong. Michael Kinsley examines how the controversial Citizens

United v. Federal Election Commission case simply upheld a core national value

(and maybe not the one you think).

For all the fuss about Supreme Court nominations, very few Supreme Court

decisions are actually remembered by history, and even fewer are notorious for

getting it wrong. In fact, there are really only three: Dred Scott (1857), which

upheld slavery; Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which upheld racial segregation; and

Bowers v. Hardwick (1986), which upheld state anti-sodomy laws. It took the

Civil War to overturn Dred Scott. Plessy v. Ferguson was reversed 58 years after

it was issued (in the most famous Supreme Court case of all, Brown v. Board of

Education of Topeka). It took only 17 years for the court to decide, in Lawrence

v. Texas (2003), that it had made a mistake, and to reverse Bowers v.

Hardwick.

Any others? Well, Bush v. Gore, which decided the 2000 election, would

certainly be on my list of disgraceful Supreme Court decisions, but the

circumstances were so bizarre that they are unlikely to arise again.

Conservatives hope the historical consensus about famously bad Supreme Court

decisions will extend someday to Roe v. Wade (1973), the decision legalizing

abortion. Liberals hope that someday the Lousy Decision Hall of Fame will

include Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010), which held that

corporations (and unions) have the right to free speech under the First

Amendment.

Already, Citizens United is probably the one Supreme Court decision since

Roe that is despised by name, though these decisions are despised by different

groups. For conservatives, Roe v. Wade has become shorthand for the profusion of

new, judge-created “rights” in the 1960s and alleged liberal excess of all

sorts. For liberals, Citizens United has come to represent the nefarious role of

money in politics, which many feel has eroded if not destroyed our democracy.

Money is blamed above all this year for Donald Trump, although Citizens United

doesn't apply to him if, as is widely supposed, he is a human being and not a

legal fiction. More generally, big business will always be bigger than small

business, and rich people will always have more money than poor people. Should

that entitle them to more influence on the political process? (A further

complication is that rich companies are owned not by rich people, by and large,

but by pension funds, which are holding the money on behalf of the middle

class.)

‘Money isn't speech” and “corporations aren't people” are the mantras of

Citizens United critics. Citizens United happens to be a group that wanted to

distribute a documentary about Hillary Clinton. It had already been established,

in Buckley v. Valeo (1976), that anyone has a First Amendment right to spend his

or her own money advancing his or her own cause, including a candidacy for

political office. Citizens United extended this right to legally created

“persons” such as corporations and unions.

The First Amendment right of free speech is generally considered to be a

liberal cause. So it's disappointing to see how quickly liberals abandon it when

the speech is something they disagree with. Money isn't speech? Ridiculous. Of

course it is. The very act of spending money sends a message, like “liking”

something on Facebook. Also, it takes money to “speak.” It's precisely because

people and organizations that have more money can speak more (more TV

commercials, more lawn signs) and speak more loudly (perhaps a better class of

political consultant) that the court's conclusion in Citizens United bothers

people so much. At the same time, no amount of money automatically translates

into a certain amount of influence over the political process. Arianna

Huffington's husband spent almost $30 million in a futile attempt to win a

Senate seat from California. He lost and today, despite his marriage to and

divorce from Arianna Huffington, his views on anything don't carry a lot of

weight. (“Not true, darling. Not true at all,” says Arianna. “I always consult

with Michael before endorsing a Supreme Court nominee.”)

The analogy I like (as did the Supreme Court in its ruling) is to a

newspaper. Suppose Citizens United were reversed and President Trump decided one

day that he was sick of The New York Times. So he proposes a law setting a

ceiling on the amount any individual or organization can spend putting out a

newspaper. Constitutional? I hope not. But it's hard to see the difference in

principle between this and a law limiting the amount a corporation or union may

spend promoting a political candidate.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote the 5–4 opinion in the Citizens United

case, spends much of his time swatting flies. The laws that Citizens United

overturns specifically exempt media companies. What is a media company and why

should a media company get special treatment? On the other hand, if media

companies don't get special treatment, the law even more clearly violates the

First Amendment. For that matter, what is an “electioneering communication”?

That's what you couldn't do within 60 days of an election (30 days for a

primary) if you wanted to stay on the right side of the law before the court

tossed the law out. “The First Amendment,” Kennedy wrote, “does not permit laws

that force speakers to retain a campaign finance attorney, conduct demographic

marketing research, or seek declaratory rulings before discussing the most

salient political issues of our day.”

You can't deny that there's a problem: big corporations and rich people do

have too much influence, should pay more taxes, and so on. Can anything be done

about this? Sure—even the Constitution is not immutable. If you don't like

something in the Constitution, you are not without recourse. You can always try

for a constitutional amendment. There are several out there now, addressing the

unpopularity of Citizens United. Versions differ, but all of the proposed

amendments aspire to overturn the Supreme Court ruling and re-install

contribution limits in federal elections. I don't know about you, but I get

nervous when people start talking constitutional amendment. Who knows what else

will sneak into the Constitution while everybody is looking the other way? You

head to Philadelphia (for old times' sake) with a pencil and a big eraser,

intent on cleaning up this First Amendment mess and maybe, if there's time, also

using your eraser on the Second, with its “right to bear arms.” (I mean, what

were they thinking?) You turn your back for a moment, just to remind yourself

what's in Amendment 19 (giving women the vote) or Article I, Section 6, of the

Constitution (a nice one, enumerating when and where members of Congress can be

arrested), and suddenly someone has run away with the 14th and it's

unconstitutional to make a salad without balsamic vinegar.

Anyway, you can't easily amend your way out of the problems raised by

Citizens United, as you can the problems raised by, say, the Second Amendment:

Citizens United, unlike the Second Amendment, is not an out-of-date decision

that needs to be rehabbed. It was a good decision. It was correctly decided. It

is not in there by historical accident. It should not be reversed. The proper

way to “fix” the problem that many people see is to change people's minds, not

to change the Constitution, which would require inserting language into the

First Amendment that directly violates First Amendment values. First Amendment

values say that if you want a more “level playing field” you must raise the low

ground. You can't level the playing field by lowering the high ground.

And the whole problem might be solved by Stein's Law (named for the late

economist Herb Stein): “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” If

enough people are enraged enough by the imbalance of political power caused by

money, they will vote against big money, which will turn it into a negative.

(原文地址：http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/04/supreme-court-citizens-united-case-decision)

以上就是文章全文了，文章来源于Vanity Fair,5月7日亚太首考写作部分的阅读文章就是来源于这本杂志。文章讨论的是政治类话题，小伙伴们可以先练习阅读文章，归纳文章的论点和中心思想以及文章中作者使用的分析论技巧，最后就是尝试着写作。

传送门

新SAT考试OG阅读核心词汇大放送汇总：http://sat.yibohua.con/yuedu45995.html

新SAT考试攻略汇总、你想知道的都在这儿了：http://sat.yibohua.con/fuxi46180.html