Corporate contributions to federal candidates have been prohibited for more than 100 years; union contributions have been outlawed for more than 60 years. These prohibitions are not at issue and never have been. The propensity of reformers to exaggerate betrays the weakness of their position.

The question before the court is whether corporations are permitted to engage in speech that might influence public opinion about a candidate. The type of activity being considered is an "independent expenditure"; a category of spending created in recognition of the fact that people have legitimate reasons to weigh in on political issues, quite apart from making direct contributions to candidates. For example, a homemade protest sign might be a kind of independent expenditure, as might a blog in which you express political opinions.

The courts permit restrictions on direct contributions to candidates; the rationale is that unlimited contributions may lead to the appearance of corruption, if not actual corruption. In contrast, independent expenditures, which are made without the cooperation or consent of any candidate, do not raise these same concerns.

In 1990, the Supreme Court held that corporations and unions may not engage in independent expenditures. At the time, this wasn't as crippling to speech as it might be, since "campaign speech" then was defined narrowly to be only those communications that expressly advocate for or against a candidate. This left open many close substitutes for campaign speech, including independent issue ads or direct contributions to political parties. Not surprisingly, many groups availed themselves of these means of exercising their free speech rights.

That led to a decade of wailing and handwringing over soft money; then as now, reform advocates argued that democracy was slipping away. In 2002, the McCain-Feingold reform restricted contributions to political parties and added an electioneering communications ban, which redefined campaign speech to include any broadcast that mentions a candidate too near an election.

The Citizens United case is about whether people should be allowed to see "Hillary: the Movie." That particular flick never threatened to be a blockbuster, but should it be illegal? The government argues that the movie, which questions Hillary Clinton's character, is the functional equivalent of campaign speech. If so, where are the limits to this sort of reasoning? What about movies that are more subtle in their pitch, like "They Live" or "Bob Roberts"? What if regulators decide that "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" is an allegory for Sarah Palin? These are the issues that the court will address in Citizens United; not whether corporations can cut checks directly to candidates.

And some clarification is needed, as the government originally argued that Congress has the power to regulate political books. Popular books by Al Franken, Ann Coulter or candidates themselves, if funded by a corporation, then would be in the purview of FEC regulators.

Reasonable people may wonder how empowering regulators to outlaw books and movies squares with the First Amendment. Especially since there is no scientific evidence that campaign reforms have any real impact on corruption or the appearance of corruption.

In fact, several states allow direct contributions from corporations or unions to candidates; yet there is no evidence that democracy has been undermined Idaho or Virginia. As a state legislator, Barack Obama collected corporate and union contributions; does that make him corrupt?

Reform advocates avoid these issues by recasting "corruption" to mean any political influence. That's how Sen. McCain could claim that our campaign finance system is corrupt, even though he couldn't identify any illegal activity.

But it is a stilted view of democracy that reserves no place for persuasion in political discussion. The original genius of American democracy is that it encourages open and vigorous debate, even when you don't like the speaker.

The government managed broadcast speech for some time, in part through the Fairness Doctrine, which was said to promote balanced public debate and "an uninhibited marketplace of ideas." The history of the Fairness Doctrine confirms the validity of the concerns of the Framers of the First Amendment, because federal officials and their agents used and sought to use the Fairness Doctrine to silence critics of three presidencies. Broadcasters adapted to the Fairness Doctrine by avoiding controversial speech, thereby chilling public debate on vital matters.

The Federal Communications Commission is proposing to manage broadcast speech by imposing localism requirements, including content requirements and advisory boards to oversee managing stations. This proposal limits the editorial independence of license holders to serve the public interest. The history of the Fairness Doctrine suggests that federal officials who make and enforce such policies are more concerned with limiting political debate than they are with advancing local concerns or the public interest. Like the Fairness Doctrine, the FCC's localism initiative poses the risk of restricting speech. Our unhappy experience with the Fairness Doctrine suggests that imposing localism mandates on broadcasters is unlikely to serve the public interest in constitutional propriety and uninhibited political debate.

As with several previous iterations of the District of Columbia House Voting Rights Act, the bill also adds a second new House seat and awards it to Utah, which narrowly missed out on a fourth representative after the last census.

Thus, we have the ultimate logroll - one guaranteed Democratic seat in exchange for a very safe Republican one.

The problem is that the legislation is facially unconstitutional. The plain text of Article I, section 2 limits House representation to voters residing in "states"—a species of jurisdiction the District of Columbia is decidedly not.

The Senate's "constitutional conscience," Robert Byrd of West Virginia, voted against the bill for just that reason (one of two Democrats to do so).

While some argue that section 2 is inapposite because the Supreme Court interprets other provisions with similar references as nevertheless encompassing District residents - for example, Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce - these few cases merely reconcile legal incongruities (commerce between the District and California cannot be "intrastate"). The District itself took the position that it should not be treated as a state for purposes of applying the Second Amendment.

Moreover, while Utah's electoral bonus secured Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch's co-sponsorship, the state's other senator, Robert Bennett, voted against the bill, presumably recognizing the Faustian bargain.

That is, not only was the new seat not permanently Utah's (instead being thrown into the overall pool that gets reapportioned after every census), but Utah was due for another House seat in 2012 anyway.

Republicans who supported the bill and who presumably will vote for it in the House for political reasons would thus rend the Constitution for an ephemeral two-year asterisk.

These simple legal facts do not affect the moral argument that the voices of D.C. residents should resound in Congress no less than those of their fellow citizens of the several states.

To remedy this anachronism from a world in which the Founders created the capital city as an enclave safe from state interference (before the federal behemoth owned land all over the country), we have two constitutional options:

• A constitutional amendment granting the District full representation in Congress (if not statehood altogether, though a possibility that would introduce complications unrelated to voting rights).

Like the Twenty-Third Amendment, which only in 1961 gave the District presidential electors—and without which D.C. residents could not constitutionally cast votes for president—we could follow the proper Article V amendment procedures. Indeed, Congress passed the D.C. Voting Rights Amendment in 1978, but only 16 states ratified it before its expiration in 1985, or;

• Retrocession to Maryland. Akin to the part of the original District that was returned to Virginia in 1846, all but the land under the Capitol, White House, and Supreme Court (and perhaps the Mall and adjacent memorials) could revert to its ceding state.

District residents would then be counted toward Maryland's congressional delegation and be represented by two senators, unlike the current proposal. Given that the historical reasons for a "federal town" have long disappeared - states lack authority over federal property, and the federal government has a large security force independent of the states - this would seem to be the best solution (while maintaining the non-residential "carve out" as a symbol of the equality of all states).

Unfortunately, Maryland does not want the District back, for reasons that are beyond the scope of this article, and in any event such an amendment to the current Senate bill failed.

Better yet, if the political rallying cry for the D.C. voting rights movement is "no taxation without representation," then let's we focus on the first part of the equation and cease federal taxation of D.C. residents.

It may be self-serving for me to propose such a change, being a District resident. There would not just be the tax break; my property value would also skyrocket from the influx of would-be Columbians. But my proposal does have the benefit of being constitutional. Sadly, it was also rejected by the Senate.

Regardless of the optimal solution, however, the course that Congress has chosen simply will not fly if we take the Constitution seriously.

We humans are adversarial beings, easily riled by us-versus-them conflict. (Even Canadians!) Democratic politics is a wonderful way to peacefully channel social antagonism into ritual symbolic warfare. High voter turnout is as likely to reflect angry social division as it is to augur the reign of Kumbaya social cohesion.

Indeed, lower levels of turnout may suggest that voters actually trust each other more -- that fewer feel an urgent need to vote defensively, to guard against competing interests or ideologies. Is it really all that bad if a broad swath of voters, relatively happy with the status quo, sit it out from a decided lack of pique?

Moreover, if you want to be civic-minded, your duty isn't to fill in ballots just to fill in ballots. You shouldn't do it in ignorance, out of emotion, or to win approval from your political friends. Your duty is to vote well -- to participate in a way that, at the very least, makes the outcome no worse.

Everybody has an incontestable and absolute right to his or her vote, but that doesn't mean it's always right to vote. Abstaining can be a way of looking after the public good, too. Not all of us have the energy, inclination, or opportunity to learn what we need to know in order to vote well. And that's OK. There's more to public-spiritedness than showing up at the polls. You can run a small business or coach a kids' hockey team with the common good in mind. That's an expression of civic virtue, too.

The virtue of opting out is especially clear once you grasp that more voting isn't necessarily better voting. Specialists in public opinion have exhaustively documented the average voter's shocking ignorance about the main issues of the day, the names of their local candidates for office, or the policies the candidates support.

The flakiest voters -- the ones least motivated to show up at the polls year in and year out -- also tend to be most poorly informed. So when turnout drops, it tends to leave the pool of remaining voters with an improved average level of political knowledge and policy know-how. If well-informed voters have a better picture of the candidate or party most likely to promote the general welfare, then especially high turnout can actually tilt an election away from the better choice, leaving everyone a bit worse off. And that's not very civic-minded.

At this point in the argument, some readers will have become pretty upset. The "best informed" voters tend to be the best-educated, and therefore tend to be relatively wealthy. Doesn't this line of thinking suggest that relatively disadvantaged citizens would do us all a favour -- would do themselves a favour -- by staying home on election day? But then who will stand up for them? Who will promote their interests?

It's an excellent question, but it's based on one disproven and one unlikely assumption. The disproven assumption is that economic self-interest predicts voter behaviour. The consensus finding of political scientists is that voters -- lettered and unlettered, rich and poor -- tend to vote in good faith to promote what they see as the public good. That's good news. The unlikely assumption is that the voters who know least about politics and public policy have the means to make good decisions about which candidates and policies will best promote their interests. That doesn't compute.

But everyone should have the means to make informed and effective democratic decisions. And that's really the issue, isn't it? It would be ideal were each and every citizen to have the income and education typical of well-informed, motivated voters. But to get there, we need policies that will actually work to promote broader prosperity and a fuller realization of basic human capacities. A better-informed pool of voters is more likely to deliver those policies.

And so we are left with the Zen riddle of democracy: the closer a non-ideal democracy comes to maximum democratic participation, the less likely it is to adopt the means to ideal democratic participation. Lower voter turnout sets the stage for better democracy.

So, on behalf of our cherished ideals of democratic equality, let me be the first to say: well done, Canadian abstainers.