The other Supreme Court
case today with a possible impact on BCRA? All the attention has been
focused on FEC v. Beaumont, but the Court decided another case today
with some potential to affect the BCRA case. In Virginia
v. Hicks, the Supreme Court said some things about the First Amendment
"overbreadth" doctrine that could be relevant to the Court's discussion of
the "electioneering provisions" of BCRA. (If you don't know why, see this
post.)
In Hicks, the Court confirms that it is an empirical inquiry into
the extent of the relative amount of constitutional applications of the law
to unconstitutional applications of the law that matter. Perhaps what is
most significant about today's case for BCRA purposes is Justice Souter's
short concurrence (joined by Justice Breyer). There is a discussion of a
"denominator" problem that sounds very much like it could have been written
with the lower court BCRA opinions in mind.
More on Schumer and the FEC In response
to my post here,
a reader points me to this Byron York
column on the topic.
More commentary on FEC v. Beaumont
Reuters is here.
AP offers this
report and this
report. Knight Ridder's report is here.
Mickey Kaus blogs here and
Stuart Buck responds here.
Nina Totenberg offers this
audio report on Beaumont and the relevance of BCRA to Supreme
Court retirements.
More Los Angeles Times
recall coverage Today the paper offers "Issa
Banking on Big Payoff in Recall Drive", and a George Skelton Capitol
Journal column entitled "A
Davis Recall Election Would Shake Up Political Landscape." Although the
first article listed is the second in a week giving a detailed profile of
Issa's recall efforts, none of the articles have even mentioned the questions
surrounding whether Issa has broken the McCain-Feingold law through soliciting
money for the recall. Other newspapers have covered this in detail. The
Times ran a brief story on the complaint May 29 (see archive link
here),
but no follow-up.
"Ruling Due on Senate Map" See this
Atlanta Journal-Constitution article on Georgia v. Ashcroft.
"Fund-Raising Push by Bush Will Put Rivals
Far Behind" The New York Times offers this
report.
--
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
http://electionlaw.blogspot.com