{"id":361,"date":"2014-04-02T20:16:46","date_gmt":"2014-04-03T00:16:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www3.law.harvard.edu\/journals\/hlpr\/?p=361"},"modified":"2015-10-02T15:21:33","modified_gmt":"2015-10-02T15:21:33","slug":"mccutcheon-v-fec","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/2014\/04\/02\/mccutcheon-v-fec\/","title":{"rendered":"McCutcheon v. FEC"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>By Tom Watts<\/em><\/p>\n<p>This morning, the Supreme Court decided<i> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.supremecourt.gov\/opinions\/13pdf\/12-536_e1pf.pdf\">McCutcheon v. FEC<\/a><\/i>, which struck down aggregate contribution limits in campaign finance laws (laws that limit the total amount an individual can give to all campaigns put together). This decision continues the trend of striking down campaign finance laws, a trend made famous in <i>Citizens United v. FEC<\/i>; many are already comparing <i>McCutcheon<\/i> to <i>Citizens United<\/i> (such as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.salon.com\/2014\/04\/02\/scalias_next_disaster_why_looming_mccutcheon_case_is_scarier_than_citizens_united\/\">Salon<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationaljournal.com\/politics\/the-supreme-court-takes-another-step-to-advance-money-in-politics-20140402\">the National Journal<\/a>). Three points are immediately notable about the impact of <i>McCutcheon<\/i> on the future of campaign finance law.<\/p>\n<p>First, while <i>Citizens United<\/i> denied that campaign finance laws could be justified by several specified interests (such as distorting the public discourse with large amounts of corporate money) and allowed the justification of preventing <i>quid pro quo<\/i> corruption, it did not explicitly say that preventing <i>quid pro quo<\/i> corruption was the <i>only<\/i> possible interest. In principle, there might have been some other justification that the government simply had not yet put forward. <i>McCutcheon<\/i> eliminates this possibility: \u201cAny regulation must . . . target what we have called \u2018quid pro quo\u2019 corruption or its appearance.\u201d It concedes, \u201cMany people might find those [other] objectives attractive,\u201d but asserts that just as the First Amendment protects other \u201crepugnant\u201d things, such as Nazi parades, it also must protect money in politics. The obvious difference, though, is that a restriction on Nazi parades is a restriction on the <i>content<\/i> of the speech; these restrictions on money in politics are regulation of the <i>process<\/i> (akin to a restriction on <i>parades in general<\/i>).<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Second, as the dissent points out, the Court \u201csubstitutes judges\u2019 understandings of how the political process works for the understanding of Congress.\u201d In campaign finance, this is a problem. Politicians know the effects of campaign finance; there are few topics in which they are more expert. Judges who have never held elected office \u2014 and it hardly seems a mere coincidence that the campaign finance revolution in the Court began with <i>Davis v. FEC<\/i> in 2008 right after Sandra Day O\u2019Connor, the last Supreme Court Justice with experience as an elected official, stepped down \u2014 are not. Justice O\u2019Connor, who served in a state legislature, would have known that the effects of today\u2019s decision will be felt primarily in the states: in principle (and perhaps in practice), a single person, or small group of people, might become kingmaker, not just for a handful of important national offices, but for <i>every major office in the country<\/i> \u2014 federal, state, and local. If Congress wanted to prevent this, is the Supreme Court well-positioned to say that Congress was wrong?<\/p>\n<p>Third, the Court somewhat ominously notes, \u201cThis case does not involve any challenge to the base limits, which we have previously upheld [in <i>Buckley v. Valeo<\/i>] as serving the permissible objective of combatting corruption.\u201d The base limits are the limits on direct contributions to individual candidates; if they were struck down, campaign finance limits would be effectively gone. Justice Thomas, in concurrence, observes tension between <i>McCutcheon<\/i> and <i>Buckley<\/i> (and says he would overrule <i>Buckley<\/i>). In a future case, might the rest of the conservative majority agree? It seems possible; the Court in this case already overruled a paragraph of <i>Buckley<\/i> (which upheld the aggregate limits that the Court today struck down). The rest of <i>Buckley<\/i> may be at risk, too, and, with it, virtually all that remains of campaign finance law.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Tom Watts This morning, the Supreme Court decided McCutcheon v. FEC, which struck down aggregate contribution limits in campaign [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":363,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/89\/2014\/04\/Money.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peZQka-5P","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}