The headline about a new Supreme Court opinion rarely tells the whole story. Rather, the detailed reasoning of the ruling often reveals whether a decision is a blockbuster or a dud. When the court writes broadly, it can eventually remake entire industries, government practices or areas of the law. Lawyers and lower courts scrutinize an opinion’s every line and footnote, pouring over the legal reasoning and noting subtle changes from the court’s earlier decisions in the same area. This is why it is fair to call last week’s Supreme Court ruling in the campaign finance case McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission a blockbuster case. In McCutcheon, the court struck down limits on the total amount that an individual could give to federal candidates, parties and certain political committees in an election cycle. The ruling is itself significant, and will channel a great deal of money into the hands of party leaders — opening up new ways for big donors to buy access to elected officials. But just as significant is the court’s reasoning — which could well lead to courts striking down what remain of campaign finance limits, including limits on contributions to individual members of Congress. We could be on our way to politicians accepting multimillion-dollar contributions from a single donor.
Elsewhere I have explained many of the subtle but significant shifts in reasoning and definitions that turn McCutcheon from a narrow holding on “aggregate limits” into a broadside against most campaign finance limits. This led Justice Stephen Breyer, in his dissent, to say that Chief Justice John Roberts’ majority opinion “eviscerates our Nation’s campaign finance laws, leaving a remnant incapable of dealing with the grave problems of democratic legitimacy that those laws were intended to resolve.”
Among the most important changes in Roberts’ opinion was the court’s defining “corruption” narrowly as akin to bribery — which makes it difficult to justify any challenged campaign finance limit.
While McCutcheon’s narrowing definition of corruption has gotten attention, a related change by the court majority in McCutcheon has been all but ignored: the virtual disappearance of the “appearance of corruption” as a basis for limiting campaign contributions. Its troubling disappearance demonstrates the extent to which the Supreme Court majority is willing to ignore political reality for the sake of its extreme free speech views.
Full Article: Opening the political money chutes | The Great Debate.