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Full-Text Articles in Election Law
The Forgotten Law Of Lobbying, Zephyr Teachout
The Forgotten Law Of Lobbying, Zephyr Teachout
Faculty Scholarship
For most of American history, until the 1950s, courts treated paid lobbying as a civic wrong, not a protected First Amendment right. Lobbying was presumptively against public policy, and lobbying contracts were not enforced. Paid lobbying threatened the integrity of individuals, legislators, lobbyists, and the integrity of society as a whole. Some states had laws criminalizing lobbying; Georgia had an anti-lobbying provision in its Constitution. Inasmuch as there was a personal right to either petition the government, or share views with officers of the government, this right was not something one could sell -- it was not, in the term …
Neoliberal Political Law, Zephyr Teachout