Law Commons^™

Corporate Power And Campaign Finance, H. Kent Greenfield

Kent Greenfield

Chapter in a book about answers to the policy problems created by Citizens United, focusing on the possibility of using corporate governance to transform corporations into positive players in the public space.

Election Delays In 2012, Rebecca Green, Emily Lippolis, Shanna Reulbach, Andrew Mccoy

Rebecca Green

No abstract provided.

The Youth Vote Matters. But Just How Young Should Voters Be? [Part I], Vivian E. Hamilton

Vivian E. Hamilton

No abstract provided.

Just How Youthful Should Voters Be? Part Ii: Defining Electoral Decision-Making Competence, Vivian E. Hamilton

Vivian E. Hamilton

No abstract provided.

Just How Youthful Should Voters Be? Part Iii: Why We Need A Conception Of Electoral Competence, And Its Implications For Adults With Cognitive Impairments, Vivian E. Hamilton

Vivian E. Hamilton

No abstract provided.

Just How Young Should Voters Be? Part Iv: Assessing Adolescents’ Electoral Competence, Vivian E. Hamilton

Vivian E. Hamilton

No abstract provided.

Democratic Inclusion, Cognitive Development, And The Age Of Electoral Majority, Vivian E. Hamilton

Vivian E. Hamilton

No abstract provided.

How Young Should Voters Be?: 16-Year-Olds’ Entitlement To The Most Basic Civil Right [Part V], Vivian E. Hamilton

Vivian E. Hamilton

No abstract provided.

Introduction: How We Vote: Electronic Voting And Other Voting Practices In The United States, Davison M. Douglas

Davison M. Douglas

No abstract provided.

The 1965 Voting Rights Act: Some Wrongs Still Not Righted, Neal Devins

Neal E. Devins

No abstract provided.

Do Judicial Elections Facilitate Popular Constitutionalism; Can They?, Nicole Mansker, Neal Devins

Neal E. Devins

No abstract provided.

Do Laws Have A Constitutional Shelf Life?, Allison Orr Larsen

Allison Orr Larsen

Times change. A statute passed today may seem obsolete tomorrow. Does the Constitution dictate when a law effectively expires? In Shelby County v. Holder, the 2013 decision that invalidated a provision of the Voting Rights Act, the Court seems to answer that question in the affirmative. Although rational and constitutional when written, the Court held that the coverage formula of the law grew to be irrational over time and was unconstitutional now because it bears “no logical relation to the present day.” This reason for invalidating a law is puzzling. The question answered in Shelby County was not about whether …

Dollars And Sense: A "New Paradigm" For Campaign Finance Reform?, Daniel A. Farber

Daniel A Farber

No abstract provided.

False Speech And The First Amendment, Erwin Chemerinsky

Erwin Chemerinsky

No abstract provided.

Right To Education For The Handicapped In West Virginia, Laura F. Rothstein

Laura Rothstein

1981 was the International Year of the Disabled Person. During that year handicapped individuals received much attention from the press. Hopefully this publicity will result in an increased awareness of the existence of handicapped persons in our society, the special problems they have, and also their special abilities. Of the legal issues concerning handicapped individuals, the one receiving the most attention is the right to education. Many changes have occurred in the legal requirements placed on state and local educational agencies, and these changes in the law have caused dramatic changes in the attitudes of parents, teachers, administrators, and others …

Hichilema And Another V Lungu And Another (2016/Cc/0031) [2016] Zmcc 4 (5 September 2016), Majority Judgment, Muna Ndulo

Muna B Ndulo

No abstract provided.

Consumer Assent To Standard Form Contracts And The Voting Analogy, Wayne Barnes

Wayne R. Barnes

No abstract provided.

The Network For Justice: Pursuing A Latinx Civil Rights Agenda, Luz E. Herrera, Pilar M. Hernández-Escontrías

Luz Herrera

This article explores the need to develop a Latinx-focused network that advances law and policy. The Network for Justice is necessary to build upon the existing infrastructure in the legal sector to support the rapidly changing demographic profile of the United States. Latinxs are no longer a small or regionally concentrated population and cannot be discounted as a foreign population. Latinxs reside in every state in our nation and, in some communities, comprise a majority of the population. The goal of the Network for Justice is to facilitate and support local and statewide efforts to connect community advocates to formal …

Prosecuting Conduit Campaign Contributions - Hard Time For Soft Money, Robert D. Probasco

Robert Probasco

In recent years, there have been several high-profile prosecutions for violations of the Federal Election Campaign Act, involving contributions nominally by one individual but funded or reimbursed by another individual deemed to be the true contributor. Prosecutions of these “conduit contribution” cases have been surprising in at least three significant respects. First, the prosecutions have been based on violations of FECA’s reporting requirements and may not have involved any violations of the substantive prohibitions or limitations of contributions. Second, the defendants were the donors rather than campaign officials who actually filed reports with FECA. Third, the cases were prosecuted as …

Governing The Presidential Nomination Commons, Brigham Daniels

Brigham Daniels

States jockeying to hold primaries and caucuses as early as possible has become the central theme of the presidential primary system. While the trend of racing to vote is not new, it has increased alarmingly. In 2008, more than half the states held contests by the first week of February. This free-for-all hurts the democratic process by encouraging uninformed voting, emphasizing the role of money in campaigns, and pressing candidates to rely on sound-bite campaigning. Because the presidential nomination is one of the most important decisions left to voters in the United States, this problem is well-recognized. It is also …

Shareholder Proposal Settlements And The Private Ordering Of Public Elections, Sarah C. Haan

Sarah Haan

Reform of campaign finance disclosure has stalled in Congress and at various federal agencies, but it is steadily unfolding in a firm-by-firm program of private ordering. Today, much of what is publicly known about how individual public companies spend money to influence federal, state, and local elections—and particularly what is known about corporate “dark money”—comes from disclosures that conform to privately negotiated contracts.

The primary mechanism for this new transparency is the settlement of the shareholder proposal, in which a shareholder trades its rights under SEC Rule 14a-8—and potentially the rights of other shareholders—for a privately negotiated social policy commitment …

If Not A Commercial Republic? Political Economy In The United States After Citizens United, David A. Westbrook

David A. Westbrook

In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission , a majority of the Supreme Court conceived the United States to be an oligarchy and ruled accordingly. What this decision might come to mean for political economy in the United States is explored through three interrelated responses to the decision. In the first, Citizens United is a turning point for constitutional law scholarship, and by extension, for what is expected from our legal system. After Citizens United , legal scholars may abandon the idea that the Court takes legal argument seriously, and that law thereby constrains, as well as expresses, social privilege. …

Business Lobbying As An Informational Public Good: Can Tax Deductions For Lobbying Expenses Promote Transparency?, Michael Halberstam, Stuart G. Lazar

Stuart Lazar

The view that “lobbying is essentially an informational activity” has persistently served the suggestion that lobbying provides a public good by educating legislators about policy and the consequences of legislation. In this article, we link a proposed tax reform with a substantive disclosure requirement to promote the kind of “information subsidy” that serves the public interest, while mitigating – at least to some extent – the distortion that may result from the imbalance of financial resources on the business side and other institutional contraints identified in the literature. We argue that corporate lobbying should be encouraged – by allowing business …

Justice For Sale: Contemplations On The "Impartial" Judge In A Citizens United World, Aviva Abramovsky

Aviva Abramovsky

Although it has long been in vogue to discredit the judiciary, it remains the most trusted of the three branches of government. However, empirical evidence supports the idea that judicial campaign donations affect judicial decision making. The reality of political campaigns under Citizens United has the potential to further undermine the public perception of judges and to enhance the potential for corruption of the judiciary.

The Ceo And The Hydraulics Of Campaign Finance Deregulation, Sarah C. Haan

Sarah Haan

Voters increasingly view their consumer activities, not their campaign contributions, as the most meaningful way to participate in politics. In 2014, after it became public that Mozilla’s CEO, Brendan Eich, had made a controversial political donation in a state ballot proposition, consumer pressure led to his resignation. Eich’s downfall and the politicization of retail markets means that business leaders are unlikely to respond to McCutcheon v. FEC by embracing transparency with their campaign donations, and also suggests that campaign finance deregulation is causing hydraulic effects that the Supreme Court has failed to anticipate. This Essay explores what “economic reprisal” means …

Voter Primacy, Sarah C. Haan

Sarah Haan

This Article argues that Citizens United v. FEC expanded the audience for campaign finance disclosure to include a group that had never before been held relevant to campaign finance disclosure—corporate shareholders—and explores the constitutional, policy, and political consequences of this change. In part IV of Citizens United, the U.S. Supreme Court departed from more than thirty years of campaign finance disclosure analysis to treat corporate shareholders as a target audience for corporate electoral spending disclosure, holding that the governmental interest advanced by campaign finance disclosure laws includes an interest in helping corporate shareholders “determine whether their corporation’s political speech advances …

A Skeptical Optimist’S Perspective On Canada Getting To Proportional Representation As An Electoral Reform, Craig Scott

Craig M. Scott

No abstract provided.

Breaching A Leaking Dam?: Corporate Money And Elections, Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer

Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer

With a brief order issued at the end of its last term, the Supreme Court dramatically raised the stakes in Citizens United v. FEC. What many had predicted would be a case decided on narrow, technical grounds has now become a possible vehicle for overturning two key campaign finance precedents. By ordering re-argument and supplemental briefing on the issue of whether it should overrule either or both Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce and the part of McConnell v. FEC which addresses the facial validity of Section 203 of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, the Court signaled that …

Charities And Lobbying: Institutional Rights In The Wake Of Citizens United, Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer

Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer

One of the many aftershocks of the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Citizens United v. FEC is that the decision may raise constitutional questions for the long-standing limits on speech by charities. There has been much scholarly attention both before and after that decision on the limit for election-related speech by charities, but much less attention has been paid to the relating lobbying speech limit. This article seeks to close that gap by exploring that latter limit and its continued viability in the wake of Citizens United. I conclude that while Citizens United by itself does not undermine the limit …

Disclosures About Disclosure, Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer

Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer

An often overlooked aspect of the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Citizens United v. FEC is the sharply contrasting factual accounts regarding disclosure of independent election-related spending. For eight of the Justices, such disclosure is constitutionally defensible because it enables voters to make informed decisions. For Justice Thomas, however, such disclosure is constitutionally suspect because of its potential to result in retaliation and related chilling of First Amendment speech in the form of financial contributions. The continuing importance of these contrasting narratives can be found not only in the pending Supreme Court case of Doe v. Reed, in which the …