Title: The Future of Campaign Finance Reform Laws in the Courts and in Congress
Abstract: The objective of campaign finance regulation has been incorrectly formulated. The main goal of campaign finance laws articulated by judges and legislators has been to eliminate a certain kind of corruption from the political system. This corruption is described as a subtle kind of bribery where large campaign contributions are used to motivate particular kinds of legislative behavior. The Court is struggling with an issue that has long beset judges and others attempting to distinguish corrupt activity on the part of government officials from politics as usual. At the extreme, corruption is easy to identify in return for some private gain, a public official performs an act she would otherwise not perform. The problem arises when the act is one that the official probably would have performed whether or not she received the benefit, and/or when the benefit is something allowed by the political system, such as campaign contributions to officials whose policies and ideology the contributor supports. Relying on the desire to eradicate institutional corruption as the guiding rationale for campaign finance reform efforts is problematic for reasons I discuss in the first part of this article. The primary problem lies in the difficulty of determining when a member of Congress is "too" compliant with the wishes of some of her constituents and when she is properly responsive to the people who elected her.