Justices Review Arizona Law on Campaign Financing
By ADAM LIPTAK
NYT
WASHINGTON — The five justices in the majority in Citizens United, last year’s campaign finance blockbuster, appeared poised on Monday to strike down an Arizona law that provides matching funds to candidates who accept public financing.
Near the end of the argument, Justice Stephen G. Breyer, who dissented in Citizens United, asked whether the court should continue what he suggested was a harmful piecemeal approach to striking down aspects of complex campaign finance laws.
“It is better to say it’s all illegal than to subject these things to death by a thousand cuts, because we don’t know what will happen when we start tinkering with one provision rather than another,” Justice Breyer said in a frustrated tone.
The likely result in the Arizona case, though, will be an incremental step and the fifth decision from the Roberts court cutting back on the government’s ability to regulate campaign financing.
(More here.)
NYT
WASHINGTON — The five justices in the majority in Citizens United, last year’s campaign finance blockbuster, appeared poised on Monday to strike down an Arizona law that provides matching funds to candidates who accept public financing.
Near the end of the argument, Justice Stephen G. Breyer, who dissented in Citizens United, asked whether the court should continue what he suggested was a harmful piecemeal approach to striking down aspects of complex campaign finance laws.
“It is better to say it’s all illegal than to subject these things to death by a thousand cuts, because we don’t know what will happen when we start tinkering with one provision rather than another,” Justice Breyer said in a frustrated tone.
The likely result in the Arizona case, though, will be an incremental step and the fifth decision from the Roberts court cutting back on the government’s ability to regulate campaign financing.
(More here.)
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2 Comments:
I have to wonder if the US Supreme Court justices would view this differently if they stood for election ?
Consider what happened to three Iowa State Supreme Court justices after they ruled same-sex marriage laws to be unconstitutional. They were targeted and defeated in the re-election. The Iowa Attorney General filed a brief in support of Arizona's law ... the idea of providing funding for candidates made sense to him as he saw how effective the special interests were in the "reaching out" to selected voters. It wasn't just the anti-gay marriage crowd, but also business groups that had gotten unfavorable rulings from the justices ... they leaped on, paying for ads ...
the rule of law was not well served.
Mac - aren't elections the essence of self-governance? If the people of Iowa don't want same-sex marriage, they have the right to place a ban on it. If the people of Minnesota want to have same-sex marriage, we have the right to extend the marriage privelege. This is why we have legislatures and consitutions.
The rule of law is not served when the judiciary acts like a super-legislature reading whatever they want in to a constitution.
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