Public Campaign Action Fund - Supreme Court

High court agrees to hear WV judicial case

Adam Smith — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 23:03:33 +0000

After a long delay, the U.S. Supreme Court announced on Friday it would hear an appeal from West Virginia concerning campaign finance and whether a state Supreme Court justice has the responsibility to recuse himself when a campaign contributor is affected.

Million Reasons Why Not

Katie Schlieper — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 21:41:34 +0000

The editorial boards the Washington Post and the New York Times are none too pleased with the Supreme Court ruling against the Millionaire's Amendment provision in BCRA that provided rescue funds to candidates facing wealthy, self-financing opponents. Read on for excerpts from the editorials.

Supremely Disappointing

Katie Schlieper — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 17:33:52 +0000

In a 5-4 split the Supreme Court delivered another very conservative campaign finance decision yesterday, ruling the "Millionaires' Amendment" provision of the Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform (BRCA) law unconstitutional. While its impossible to say what the full implications of this decision are, its clear the Court is no friend to laws that seek to limit the influence of private money on our elections.

Turn Your Attention

Katie Schlieper — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 22:09:09 +0000

Deborah Goldberg begins this article in The Nation parsing the recent Supreme Court decisions on political advertising and arguing that while disclosure requirements are all well and good, full public financing of campaigns is the ultimate answer to the battles both in court, and in the public sphere, about the best way to regulate campaign finance.

A Winning Game

Katie Schlieper — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 20:54:02 +0000

Nathan Newman at TPM Cafe contends that the recent Supreme Court decision on campaign ads by corporations and unions has effectively made Clean Elections the only "game in town" when it comes to a viable campaign finance proposal: "By enhancing the speech of publicly financed candidates, rather than restricting spending of their opponents, clean elections achieves the same purpose of limiting the disproportionate power of corporate interests without running afoul of Supreme Court legal limits." Read more here.

Supreme Court's New Campaign Finance Ruling

Katie Schlieper — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 15:06:11 +0000

Big news from the Supreme Court yesterday which decided on a 5-4 vote to loosen certain regulations established under the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA, better known as the McCain-Feingold Act) to allow corporations and unions to air ads that mention a candidate's name right up to election day. It likely means a larger influx of money from groups that traditionally run these ads, perhaps leading to a more expensive elections cycle.

Retired Justice Sandra Day O'Connor blasts Tom DeLay

David Donnelly — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 13:17:00 +0000

On NPR this morning, Nina Totenberg covered a speech by retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor in which she took DeLay to task, not by name but by deed. Here's a partial transcript, courtesy of Raw Story:And then she took aim at f...

Texas redistricting

Nancy Watzman — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 12:31:00 +0000

Lu Dubose, co-author with Jan Reid of The Hammer Comes Down: The Nasty, Brutish and Shortened Political Life of Tom DeLay, has a good piece over at TomPaine.com summarizing the DeLay Texas redistricting debacle.He reminds us that the U.S. Sup...

DeLay says separation of church and state not in U.S. Constitution

David Donnelly — Tue, 01 Mar 2005 19:39:00 +0000

Associated Press has the direct quote:"I hope the Supreme Court will finally read the Constitution and see there's no such thing, or no mention, of separation of church and state in the Constitution," said DeLay, a Republican from Sugar Lan...