[EL] Poor Katrina

[Smith, Brad]

Katrina Van Heuvel's column (in today's links, below) is a of a sort that always makes me chuckle. Leave aside her notion that any discussion of political strategy "the right" is some sort of illegitimate plot. When Lewis Powell wrote the memo she uses as her lead, not only were there no aggregate limits, which is all McCutcheon struck down, there were no limits on how much an individual could contribute to a campaign at all. So after more than 40 years of a "war against American citizens," the nefarious Powell and his ilk are not yet back to square one. Someone on "the right" needs to sack the generals. Or maybe "the right" just playing the really really really long game.


Bradley A. Smith

Josiah H. Blackmore II/Shirley M. Nault

   Professor of Law

Capital University Law School

303 E. Broad St.

Columbus, OH 43215

614.236.6317

http://law.capital.edu/faculty/bios/bsmith.aspx

________________________________
From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu [law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] on behalf of Rick Hasen [rhasen at law.uci.edu]
Sent: Friday, April 11, 2014 11:29 PM
To: law-election at UCI.edu
Subject: [EL] ELB News and Commentary 4/12/14
“The war against American citizens”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=60417>
Posted on April 11, 2014 8:08 pm<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=60417> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Katrina vanden Heuvel WaPo column:<http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/katrina-vanden-heuvel-the-war-against-american-citizens/2014/04/07/77000814-be82-11e3-b195-dd0c1174052c_story.html>

In 1971, before becoming a Supreme Court justice, Lewis F. Powell Jr. penned a memo<http://scalar.usc.edu/works/growing-apart-a-political-history-of-american-inequality/the-powell-memorandum> to his friend Eugene Sydnor of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce advocating a comprehensive strategy in favor of corporate interests. Powell wrote, “Under our constitutional system, especially with an activist-minded Supreme Court, the judiciary may be the most important instrument for social, economic and political change.”

In last week’s ruling in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission <http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/13pdf/12-536_e1pf.pdf> , the Supreme Court was not a mere instrument so much as a blowtorch, searing a hole in the fabric of our fragile democracy.

[Share]<http://www.addtoany.com/share_save#url=http%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D60417&title=%E2%80%9CThe%20war%20against%20American%20citizens%E2%80%9D&description=>
Posted in campaign finance<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>, Supreme Court<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=29>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://webshare.law.ucla.edu/Listservs/law-election/attachments/20140412/834efec5/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: share_save_171_16.png
Type: image/png
Size: 1504 bytes
Desc: share_save_171_16.png
URL: <http://webshare.law.ucla.edu/Listservs/law-election/attachments/20140412/834efec5/attachment.png>