Abstract: 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. 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 used by one court, a "vendible." Line-drawing between illegitimate paid lobbying and legitimate legal services was not easy, but in general courts enforced contracts where the thing being sold was expertise to be shared in a public forum, while refusing to enforce contracts where the thing being sold was personal influence to be shared in private meetings. This article tells the history of this earlier approach toward lobbying. It explores the lobbying cases of the nineteenth and early twentieth century courts, looking at the logic underpinning them and how courts distinguished between illegitimate lobbying and legitimate hiring of professional lawyers.
Publication Year: 2014
Publication Date: 2014-03-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
Access and Citation
Cited By Count: 7
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