election-law_gl-digest     Friday, March 22 2002     Volume 01 : Number 170




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Date: Fri, 22 Mar 2002 09:29:29 -0800
From: Rick Hasen <rick.hasen@lls.edu>
Subject: district court challenge to McCain-Feingold

As has been widely reported, the McCain-Feingold campaign
finance law (or soon to be law) has a provision for initial
expedited judicial review of constitutional challenges by a
3-judge court in D.C., followed by direct appeal to the
Supreme Court. Does anyone have any sense of (1) the likely
composition of the panel of the judges that will hear the
case and (2) the extent to which the court is likely to
consider evidence of campaign finance practices?  (One could
imagine both sides wishing to build an evidentiary record on
issues such as the presence or absence of corruption and its
appearance under current law as well as the likely effect of
the new rules drawing the line between express and issue
advocacy on campaigning). That kind of proceeding sounds
like it could take quite some time. Add into that the time
for briefing in the Supreme Court and it is difficult to
imagine a decision before Nov. 6, when the law is set to go
into effect.

I saw a bit of the press conference with McConnell's legal
team on C-SPAN. Floyd Abrams stated that their preliminary
position was not to challenge the $2000 individual
contribution limit or challenge Buckley itself (despite the
presence of people on the legal team like Kathleen Sullivan
and James Bopp, both of whom believe that Buckley's holding
upholding the FECA's contribution limits should be
reversed). Instead, it appears that the challenge will be
one solely directed at McCain-Feingold as violating existing
Supreme Court precedent.  Of course, other plaintiffs may
challenge Buckley more directly.

- --
Rick Hasen
Professor of Law and William M. Rains Fellow
Loyola Law School
919 South Albany Street
Los Angeles, CA  90015-1211
(213)736-1466 - voice
(213)380-3769 - fax
rick.hasen@lls.edu
http://www.lls.edu/academics/faculty/hasen.html

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End of election-law_gl-digest V1 #170
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