[EL] McCutcheon transcript -- Definition of Audacity

[Kelner, Robert]

It's a chicken or the egg thing, really. For the pro-regulation crowd, the "hole" was created by Citizens United. For the rest of us, the hole was created by McCain-Feingold, which embedded in FECA a dramatic advantage for outside soft money groups over the political parties.

Sent from my iPhone

On Oct 8, 2013, at 8:08 PM, "Rick Hasen" <rhasen at law.uci.edu<mailto:rhasen at law.uci.edu>> wrote:

I should add that this is the whole bootstrapping argument of the anti-regulation crowd.  Make a hole in the law, and then argue that with the hole, no further regulation makes any sense.

On 10/8/13 5:05 PM, Marty Lederman wrote:
Please let me know if I'm misreading this, but doesn't Justice Scalia, joined by Justice Kennedy, spend page after page chiding the SG that the contribution limits can't possibly serve an anti-corruption interest because they'll simply cause wealthy individuals to funnel their dollars into independent expenditures (and PAC expenditures), for which officeholders will be even more grateful, thereby increasing the risk and degree of corruption?

Finally, after exhibiting admirable patience, SG Verrilli said:  "Well, Justice Scalia, I'm not here to debate the question of whether the Court's jurisprudence is correct with respect to the risks of corruption from independent expenditures."  And then when Justice Kennedy expressed dissatisfaction with that answer, Justice Kagan quipped:  "I suppose that if this Court is having second thoughts about its rulings that independent expenditures are not corrupting, we could change that part of the law."

I don't know how it played in the courtroom . . . but on the page, it sure comes off as the ultimate in chutzpah.


On Tue, Oct 8, 2013 at 1:34 PM, Rick Hasen <rhasen at law.uci.edu<mailto:rhasen at law.uci.edu>> wrote:
Read the Transcript in McCutcheon Oral Argument at Supreme Court<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=55810>
Posted on October 8, 2013 10:33 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=55810> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Here<http://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/12-536_21o2.pdf>.

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Posted in Uncategorized<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>

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--
Rick Hasen
Chancellor's Professor of Law and Political Science
UC Irvine School of Law
401 E. Peltason Dr., Suite 1000
Irvine, CA 92697-8000
949.824.3072 - office
949.824.0495 - fax
rhasen at law.uci.edu<mailto:rhasen at law.uci.edu>
http://www.law.uci.edu/faculty/full-time/hasen/
http://electionlawblog.org

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