Law Commons^™

The Much Maligned 527 And Institutional Choice, Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer

Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer

The continuing controversy over 527 organizations has led Congress to impose extensive disclosure requirements on these political organizations and to consider imposing extensive restrictions on their funding as well. The debate about what laws should govern these entities has, however, so far almost completely ignored the fact that such laws raise a complicated institutional choice question. This Article seeks to resolve that question by developing a new institutional choice framework to guide this and similar choices. The Article first explores the context for making this determination by describing the current laws governing 527s, including both federal election laws administered by …