[EL] Poor Katrina
Rick Hasen
rhasen at law.uci.edu
Sun Apr 13 09:51:24 PDT 2014
Mark is right that Justice Powell was somewhat comfortable with the
contribution limits, though he was ambivalent. More interesting is his
decision to concur in MCFL, the precursor to Austin, endorsing an
antidistortion/equality argument for campaign finance laws. Justice
Scalia concurred in that opinion too. Here's the relevant footnote from
my 2003 book talking about that case:
mcfl
On 4/12/14, 2:52 PM, Mark Schmitt wrote:
> I have a little sideline in trying to get people to recognize that
> "The Powell Memo" is a legend created almost entirely by the left. A
> few years ago, I went through every history of the conservative
> movement, sympathetic or not, published before 2000 and there was only
> one brief mention of the memo, in a history of Heritage. The memo was
> probably read by fewer than ten people when Powell first sent it to
> his neighbor, and not many more after Jack Anderson made it public two
> years later. And what Powell, who was not a movement conservative,
> recommended bore little resemblance to the actual conservative policy
> and media infrastructure.
> But with each passing year, its importance grows, to the point that
> Hedrick Smith wrote a whole book about it last year. It's just too
> tempting to tell the story this way.
> It's unfortunate, because vanden Heuvel otherwise has a good point
> about the emergence of an extremely activist Court.
> I'm going to put out an updated version of this article soon, looking
> at the more recent explosion of interest in the memo:
> http://prospect.org/article/legend-powell-memo
> Also worth noting, incidentally, that according to Rick Hasen's
> article on the drafting of Buckley, Powell was one of the Justices
> involved in drafting the decision and was comfortable with the
> contribution limits, and presumably with the aggregate limits as well.
> ------ Original Message ------
> From: "Smith, Brad" <BSmith at law.capital.edu
> <mailto:BSmith at law.capital.edu>>
> To: "law-election at UCI.edu" <law-election at uci.edu
> <mailto:law-election at uci.edu>>
> Sent: 4/12/2014 8:11:51 AM
> Subject: [EL] Poor Katrina
>> 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
>> <mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu>
>> [law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu
>> <mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu>] on behalf of
>> Rick Hasen [rhasen at law.uci.edu <mailto:rhasen at law.uci.edu>]
>> *Sent:* Friday, April 11, 2014 11:29 PM
>> *To:* law-election at UCI.edu <mailto: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>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
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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
http://www.law.uci.edu/faculty/full-time/hasen/
http://electionlawblog.org
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