Overview

The story of how the First Amendment became an obstacle to campaign finance regulation—a history that began much earlier than most imagine. Americans across party lines believe that public policy is rigged in favor of those who wield big money in elections. Yet, legislators are restricted in addressing these concerns by a series of Supreme Court decisions finding that campaign finance regulations violate the First Amendment. Big Money Unleashed argues that our current impasse is the result of a long-term process involving many players. Naturally, the justices played critical roles—but so did the attorneys who hatched the theories necessary to support the legal doctrine, the legal advocacy groups that advanced those arguments, the wealthy patrons who financed these efforts, and the networks through which they coordinated strategy and held the Court accountable. Drawing from interviews, public records, and archival materials, Big Money Unleashed chronicles how these players borrowed a litigation strategy pioneered by the NAACP to dismantle racial segregation and used it to advance a very different type of cause.

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9780226830735

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Reviews

"""Ann Southworth’s Big Money Unleashed is a tour de force, a must-read account of how lawyers and their clients weaponized the First Amendment to allow big money to flow into American politics despite repeated congressional efforts to stanch its flow. Southworth takes us behind the scenes to see the strategies used by lawyers, and their calculated interactions with judges and clients, to make profound and deleterious legal and social change."" -- Richard L. Hasen | author of ""A Real Right to Vote: How a Constitutional Amendment Can Safeguard American Democracy"""

Author Information

Ann Southworth is professor of law and codirector of the Center for Empirical Research on the Legal Profession at the University of California, Irvine.

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