Ex-Supreme Court justice ripped for bemoaning election threat he helped create

Two analysts have hammered former Justice Anthony Kennedy for bemoaning a threat they say he helped create.

In an essay excerpt published Tuesday by Slate, adapted from "Master Plan," the new book from David Sirota and Jared Jacang Maher based on their award-winning podcast, the writers focus on how Kennedy's look back at his legacy might have come too late.

The authors focus on how Kennedy's memoir "Life, Law & Liberty" and its timing might indicate how he's trying to salvage what is left of his imprint on American life, namely how "Kennedy is now trying to shape his legacy on his own terms, and he says he’s worried about the survival of democracy—but democracy is in crisis in no small part because of the decision he authored," the analysts write.

In his opinion under Citizens United v. FEC, Kennedy wrote:

“Political speech is indispensable to decision making in a democracy,” he wrote, “and this is no less true because the speech comes from a corporation rather than an individual.”

This decision has come back to haunt Kennedy, the analysts argue.

"Kennedy’s new memoir may celebrate a life of moderation and pragmatism, but his most defining act is the radical and delusional Citizens United opinion, in which he unironically asserted that 'independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption' and insisted that 'the appearance of influence or access will not cause the electorate to lose faith in this democracy,'" according to Sirota and Jacang Maher.

In the end, the opinion changed the future of politics.

"That ruling was the culmination of a decadeslong plot to turn elections into auctions, and transform political discourse into a one-way monologue by those wealthy enough to buy a megaphone to drown out the rest of us," Sirota and Jacang Maher add. "The story of how corruption became legal in America isn’t just about memos, movements, and legal strategies. It’s also about seemingly technical moments inside the chamber, when a single justice fused his maximalist vision of free speech to the raw power of cold, hard cash."