Appearance of Corruption

"The sanctity of political speech is a key element of the U.S. Constitution and a cornerstone of the American republic. When the Supreme Court linked political speech to campaign finance in its landmark Buckley v. Valeo (1976) decision, the modern era of campaign finance regulation was born. In practical terms, this decision meant that in order to pass constitutional muster, any laws limiting money in politics must be narrowly-tailored and serve a compelling state interest. The lone state interest the Court was willing to entertain was the mitigation of corruption. In order to reach this argument the Court advanced a sophisticated behavioral model, one with key assumptions about how laws will affect voters' opinions and behavior. These assumptions have received surprisingly little attention in the literature. This book takes up the task of identifying and analyzing empirically the Court's presumed links between campaign finance regulations and political opinions and behavior. In so doing, we rely on original survey data and experiments from 2009-2016 to openly confront the question of what happens when the Supreme Court is wrong, and when the foundation of over 40 years of jurisprudence is simply not true"--