Law Commons^™

Beyond Campaign Finance: The First Amendment Implications Of Nixon V. Shrink Missouri Pac, Christina E. Wells

Faculty Publications

This essay, however, is less concerned with the campaign finance aspects of Shrink than with the decision's broader implications. In the course of its decision, the Shrink Court not only obfuscated the standard of scrutiny applicable to contribution regulations, it effectively ignored the government's lack of factual support for the law, instead accepting the state's assertions at face-value. Consequently, Shrink is far more than a simple application of Buckley. Rather, it reflects fundamental problems with the Court's standards of review in First Amendment cases generally. The more global nature of Shrink's problems suggest that, despite scholarly focus on the Buckley …