How Super PACs Have Transformed the Federal Campaign Finance System: A Political Scientists' Amicus Brief to the Supreme Court.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Baker ◽  
Robert G. Boatright ◽  
anthony j corrado ◽  
Diana Dwyre ◽  
John Green ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Campaign Finance ◽  
Finance System ◽  
System A ◽  
Super Pacs ◽  
The Supreme Court

The Appearance of Corruption

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daron R. Shaw ◽  
Brian E. Roberts ◽  
Mijeong Baek
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Campaign Finance ◽  
Behavioral Model ◽  
Political Speech ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Original Survey ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
Political Opinions ◽  
Modern Era ◽  
The U.S

The sanctity of political speech is a key element of the U.S. Constitution and a cornerstone of the American republic. When the Supreme Court linked political speech to campaign finance in its landmark Buckley v. Valeo (1976) decision, the modern era of campaign finance regulation was born. In practical terms, this decision meant that in order to pass constitutional muster, any laws limiting money in politics must be narrowly tailored and serve a compelling state interest. The lone state interest the Court was willing to entertain was the mitigation of corruption. In order to reach this argument the Court advanced a sophisticated behavioral model, one with key assumptions about how laws will affect voters’ opinions and behavior. These assumptions have received surprisingly little attention in the literature. This book takes up the task of identifying and analyzing empirically the Court’s presumed links between campaign finance regulations and political opinions and behavior. In so doing, we rely on original survey data and experiments from 2009–2016 to openly confront the question of what happens when the Supreme Court is wrong, and when the foundation of over forty years of jurisprudence is simply not true.

The Constitution and Campaign Finance Regulation after Buckley v. Valeo

1976 ◽  
Vol 425 (1) ◽  
pp. 124-133 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albert J. Rosenthal
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
First Amendment ◽  
Campaign Finance ◽  
Public Financing ◽  
Finance Reform ◽  
Campaign Finance Reform ◽  
Legislative Action ◽  
Disclosure Requirements ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Supreme Court

In a decision virtually unprecedented in scope, the Supreme Court, in Buckley v. Valeo, decided January 30, 1976, has ruled on a wide range of constitutional questions generated by federal campaign finance reform legis lation. In brief, limitations on contributions, reporting and disclosure requirements, and public financing of campaigns have been upheld as at least constitutional on their face, although the door is still open to attacks based on specific evidentiary showings of unconstitutional effects in particular situations. Limitations on expenditures—independently made on behalf of candidates, by candidates themselves out of their own funds, or in the course of the candidates' campaigns—have all been held unconstitutional, as infring ing upon rights under the First Amendment. The choices available for future legislative action, both federal and state, are henceforth likely to be limited in the light of the con straints to be found in the holdings and implications of this case.

Democracy and the Freedom of Speech: Rethinking the Conflict between Liberty and Equality

2013 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 293-311 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yasmin Dawood
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Campaign Finance ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Supreme Court Of Canada ◽  
Competing Values ◽  
Political Equality ◽  
Normative Claim ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The U.S

This article re-examines the distinction between the libertarian approach and the egalitarian approach to the regulation of campaign finance. The conventional approach (as exemplified by the work of Owen Fiss and Ronald Dworkin) is to reconcile the competing values of liberty and equality. By contrast, this article advances the normative claim that democracies should seek to incorporate both the libertarian and the egalitarian approaches within constitutional law. I argue that instead of emphasizing one value over the other, the ideal position is one that simultaneously recognizes the values of liberty and equality despite the irreconcilable tension between them. Rather than choosing one value over the other, or reconciling these values by redefining them, I claim that it is vital to maintain the tension between liberty and equality by instantiating the conflict in law. Democracy is better served when the law contains an explicit tension between these foundational values.After setting forth this normative framework, I then apply it to the campaign finance decisions of the Supreme Courts of the United States and Canada, respectively. I make two main claims. First, I argue that although the libertarian/egalitarian distinction is usually presented as a binary choice, the laws of a given jurisdiction often simultaneously display both libertarian and egalitarian characteristics. For this reason, I claim that the libertarian/egalitarian distinction is better conceived of as a “libertarian-egalitarian spectrum.” Second, I argue that in recent years, the U.S. Supreme Court and the Supreme Court of Canada, respectively, have privileged one value—liberty or equality—at the expense of the other. The U.S. Supreme Court has over-emphasized the value of liberty (most notably in its Citizens United decision), with the result that political equality is markedly undermined. By the same token, the Supreme Court of Canada’s commitment to equality has become too one-sided in recent cases (Harper and Bryan), with the result that there are significant impairments to free speech liberties. I argue that both of these approaches are detrimental to democratic participation and governance. Finally, this article offers a preliminary proposal for how courts and legislatures can allow for the conflict between liberty and equality to be instantiated in law.

Distributive Autonomy, The Constitution, and Campaign Finance

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Attanasio
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Free Speech ◽  
Campaign Finance ◽  
Electoral Behavior ◽  
The Political ◽  
Right To Know ◽  
False Information ◽  
Presidential Candidates ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Wealthy Donors

In Kovacs v. Cooper, the Supreme Court permitted government to regulate the volume of sound trucks. One opinion stated that free speech does not include freedom “to drown out the natural speech of others.” Campaign speech of by interests drowns out all other campaign speech. This problem heavily distorts both the speaker’s right to speak and the listener’s right to know. The distortions disadvantage poorly financed candidates and mislead voters. What people think are the most important issues will be distorted; so will intensity of feelings on those issues. Such distortions will systematically skew electoral behavior based on false information. These distortions impair distributive autonomy of both listeners and speakers. In 2016, both presidential candidates overwhelmingly catered to wealthy donors. In this milieu, wealthy donors comprise the political “in” group; that is, the group who dominates government. Everyone else (the vast majority of voters) is a political “out.”

Editorial: The Riba¯ Case Pending for three Decades: The Federal Shar¯ı‘at Court, Pakistan may Fulfill its Constitutional Responsibility by Outlawing the Interest

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (01) ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Muhammad Ayub
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
The State ◽  
Islamic Banking ◽  
Free Banking ◽  
Policy Decisions ◽  
Finance System ◽  
Banking And Finance ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Almost All

While Islamic banking is being promoted by the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) working parallel with theconventional banking since 2002, the Constitution of Pakistan requires that interest must be outlawed from The economy as early as possible [Article 38 (f)]. The legal trajectory of interest made its way to the Federal Shar¯ı‘at Court (FSC) after the 10-years moratorium on adjudicating fiscal and banking matters ended at the end of May 1990. The FSC and subsequently the Shar¯ı‘at Appellate Bench (SAB) of the Supreme Court of Pakistan delivered their landmark judgments in 1991 and 1999 respectively, but the state officials opted to hide behind some constitutional provisions, or the presumed view of some jurists /scholars to plead that the ‘interest" was not that rib¯a as prohibited by Qur’¯an. Although, the connotation of rib¯a has long been agreed at the level of Islamic ummah to include moderncommercial interest in rib¯a, and e_orts for evolving ‘interest-free’ banking and finance system are underway also including Pakistan, but there have been some hindrances in implementation of Islamic injunctions and the Shar¯ı‘at Courts’ judgments. The rib¯a case being reheard in the FSC since 2013, after it was remanded back by the SAB in 2001 is becoming gradually complicated. The debt trap for Pakistan’s economy is becoming increasingly painful requiring to transfer almost all resources for servicing the debt. However, little e_ort hasbeen made to transform the economy of Pakistan to risk and reward sharing and cooperative bases in the light of Islamic principles. During the hearing of the case in May this year the representatives of the state contended that "the non-justiciable policy decisions regarding implementable possibilities were beyond the jurisdiction ofthe Shar¯ı‘at Court.

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