{"id":2270,"date":"2008-11-30T13:55:55","date_gmt":"2008-11-30T18:55:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=2270"},"modified":"2008-11-30T14:21:28","modified_gmt":"2008-11-30T19:21:28","slug":"a-tale-of-two-blawgs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2008\/11\/a-tale-of-two-blawgs\/","title":{"rendered":"A Tale of Two Blawgs"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>It may be a new story that is already old, but here’s my own example of the\u00a0role\u00a0blogs can play\u00a0in legal scholarship. A post<\/a> on my personal blog is turning into a paper.\u00a0But before I can complete the paper (I was well into another project), a case comment <\/a>in the Harvard Law Review<\/em> has responded to my idea.<\/p>\n

I am working on a paper discussing the potential implications of the Supreme Court’s decision last term in Davis v. FEC<\/em><\/a>,<\/em> striking down the “Millionaire’s Amendment” to the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (more commonly known as the McCain-Feingold Act).\u00a0 This provision increased the campaign contribution limits for candidates facing an opponent who has self-funded in excess of a trigger amount. So, if a wealthy self-financing candidate (like our own Sen. Herb Kohl or Rep. Steve Kagen) spends a sufficient amount of his or her own funds, the amount that individuals and party committees are allowed to contribute to his or her opponent increases. The Court, in a 5-4 decison,\u00a0found that this provision is an unconstitutional burden on the self-financing candidate’s free speech rights.<\/p>\n

The essential point of the paper, made on the very day that the decision\u00a0came down on my personal blog (note to the Dean: see your summer research dollars\u00a0at work), is that,\u00a0when considered with the Court’s decision in <\/em>Wisconsin Right to Life v. FEC<\/em> <\/a>during the previous term, Davis<\/em> may well render public financing schemes unworkable. <\/p>\n

This is because WRTL<\/em> offers broad protection for issue advocacy directed toward a candidate for federal office. McCain-Feingold prohibits the use of corporate and union treasury funds for “electioneering communications” during certain periods immediately preceding a federal election. But the controlling opinion in WRTL<\/em> holds that this prohibition can only be\u00a0applied to\u00a0ads that are incapable of being construed as anything other than a issue advocacy. This paves the way for substantial independent expenditures with funds from corporate and union donors.<\/p>\n

To address this, public financing schemes are often asymmetrical. i.e., they provide additional funding\u00a0to candidates facing\u00a0opponents who, through self-funding or the rejection of public\u00a0funding, spend in excess of a specifed trigger point. They\u00a0may also provide additional funding to candidates\u00a0against whom more than a specified amount of independent expenditures\u00a0have been made.<\/p>\n

My argument is that Davis\u00a0<\/em>calls these schemes into\u00a0question.\u00a0 If\u00a0an increase in contribution limits\u00a0improperly burdens the rights of self-financing candidates, then\u00a0wouldn’t the provision of additional public funds do so as well? And, if additional funds impermissibly burden the rights of self-financers, why don’t they also impair the rights of independents who wish to engage in election-time issue advocacy?<\/p>\n

For this reason I called Davis <\/em>the most important decision of the day. (A somewhat celebrated case called Heller<\/em> was also announced on June 26, 2008).<\/p>\n

There are arguments against reading Davis<\/em> in this way, and I deal with them in the paper. One (although not, I think, the strongest) relies on the distinction between government subsidies and penalties. It is well established that, at least in certain circumstances, the government can fund certain speech without also funding analogous speech. It can, for example, fund only family planning clinics that do not counsel patients about abortion.\u00a0The\u00a0Harvard\u00a0author believes that this saves asymmetrical public financing. The government\u00a0is simply\u00a0enhancing the\u00a0“speech power” of those who choose public financing.<\/p>\n

The problem is that\u00a0enhancing\u00a0“speech power” is precisely what Davis<\/em> involved. Providing money to\u00a0one’s opponent (or\u00a0to a candidate that one seeks to criticize through issue advocacy) burdens speech in a way that the simple absence of a subsidy for one’s\u00a0own speech\u00a0does not. I may turn out to be wrong about Davis<\/em>‘s implications, but this shouldn’t be the reason.<\/p>\n

(N.b., The comment notes that Rick Hasen expressed\u00a0a similar view at the Election Law Blog, and I see that, allowing for\u00a0time zone differences, \u00a0he appears to have beaten me by\u00a0three hours and twenty seven minutes<\/a>. These days you lose if you snooze.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It may be a new story that is already old, but here’s my own example of the\u00a0role\u00a0blogs can play\u00a0in legal scholarship. A post on my personal blog is turning into a paper.\u00a0But before I can complete the paper (I was well into another project), a case comment in the Harvard Law Review has responded to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[67,35,44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-amendment","category-legal-scholarship","category-political-processes-rhetoric","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2270\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}