Rationale

Christina Aga

Dr. Sonia Apgar Begert

English 102

2 June 2015

Rationale

This research project will begin with the introduction of two Supreme Court rulings that went largely unnoticed, save for the legal community. This section will include a description of each ruling and go on to explain the relevance of these rulings as a departure from previous campaign finance rulings and legislation. There will be point by point differences between the rulings and what restrictions have been scaled back. This section will include the free speech rationale used by the Supreme Court Justices to justify their stance in deregulating campaign finance laws. The thesis statement will be included at the end of this introductory section.

The following section will review the history of campaign finance jurisprudence. It will include a review of three important Supreme Court rulings that informed the majority justices of the Citizens United and McCutcheon rulings, as well as one bipartisan act that was partially reversed as a result of Citizens United. It will include the summary analysis of the perspectives provided by the justices who authored each ruling, as well as their analysis of what constitutes illegal campaign finance activity, per the new definition of corruption provided in the Citizens United ruling.

This paper will examine the political actors who are involved in the political process of any federal election. There are formal and non-formal political players and the ways in which campaign finance law can regulate non-formal political activities is extremely limited. This section will identify the formal bipartisan system and how a party handles potential candidates. It will also identify how political action committees operate in relation to candidates. There will be a follow up section on non-formal political that operate a non-profit organizations and shadow donors.

This paper will cite the difference between campaign contributions and campaign expenditures, as well as the laws surrounding who may donate. Direct campaign contributions are still illegal, but the narrowed definition of corruption allows room for undue influence from third parties and makes it difficult to prove corruption. This will be a segway into the implications of the Citizens United and McCutcheon rulings, where political coercion from an employer or laundering contributions through super PACs and non-profits are possible. This section will forecast the effects that these rulings will have on the quality of the pool of candidates and how well candidates can represent their constituency while catering to their big money donors.

The next section will provide two different approaches to campaign finance reform that could be used to create transparency and encourage ethical practice. Clean elections and self-enforcing private contracts are examples of ways to cope with the Citizens United/McCutcheon climate.

The last section will briefly review the inadequacy of the two Supreme Court rulings, the current effects of the decisions and the likely implications in the future. I will conclude by restating my thesis and why the Roberts court failed to safeguard an already fragile campaign finance system, one that needed to be refortified – not bulldozed.