According
to history, modern American campaign-finance reform began with tight rules. It
began in the Progressive Era, with the Tillman Act of 1907 prohibiting direct
financial contributions to political candidates from corporations. However, in
the late 1970s, congress began “relaxing the rules”. Most recently, in 2011, eight
of the current Supreme Court Justices questioned lawyers in an oral argument
over an Arizona law known as the Citizens Clean Elections Act, a law that aims
at regulating candidates that have a lot more money than others. This law states
that the candidates that have a great deal less money should be given financial
aid from state funding. However, it seemed that the argument was going to deem
the law unconstitutional. During the debate, Justice Stephen G. Breyer, a long
time advocate for reforming these laws, made an unorthodox comment about the
Court’s handling of them. “It is better to say it’s all illegal than to subject
these things to death by a thousand cuts, because we don’t know what will
happen when we start tinkering with one provision rather than another,” he
said.
What is
interesting is that the Court asserted for the first time during this argument
that an individual’s choice to spend money in support of a political cause was protected
by the First Amendment. This means it is putting the issue up next to
delivering a speech or holding up a sign in protest. It is this metaphor—that
money is speech—that is driving the current Court’s rebellion in
campaign-finance law. This article goes into depth about the Court’s opinion on
where these laws stand with our current election, and what the opposing side
has to say as well. Whether or not the Arizona law is unconstitutional, it is
clear that the problem of campaign-finance reform is a hot topic.
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