This is the text of my piece published this morning on McDonnell in the Washington Post:

A unanimous Supreme Court held Monday that it is not - certainly not under any and all circumstances - a crime for someone to pay for "access" to government decision-makers. Careful not to say so too explicitly, the court is signaling that political favor-seeking fueled by cash and gifts may well be repellent, but there is only so much the legal system can - or should - do about it.

Amid all the election-year talk about a "rigged" political system, the room left by this opinion for pay-to-play politics strikes a somewhat discordant note. Two years ago, in a case involving overall contribution limits, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote that contributors can reasonably expect some measure of "ingratiation and access." Now, Roberts has taken another, aggressive step in that same direction, this time involving personal gifts rather than political contributions. He has brought the court along with the view that the bribery laws don't necessarily reach purely personal benefits provided to a government official in return for help arranging meetings or scheduling calls.

One question recently raised here is whether in thinking about campaign finance reform, New York Times editorialists and their followers would place a limit on how much would be spent, and how negatively, to keep Donald Trump out of the White House. The Times believes him to dangerous to the country, entirely unfit for office, at the same time that it counsels that the process by which he or any candidate is evaluated must include restrictions on expenditures to urge defeat (or election). It is fair to note these tensions, testing reform principles and intuitions in the concrete conditions of electoral competition where there are found real candidacies, meaningful choices, and serious consequences.

A similar test might be conducted in the case of limits directed toward the timing of certain speech. Under campaign finance jurisprudence, the First Amendment recognizes a difference between fully protected “issues” speech and the speech with the effect or purpose of influencing elections that may be regulated to prevent corruption or its appearance. The reforms of recent years have whittled away at the distinction, regulating electioneering communications on policy issues that may contain a reference to a candidate and so, being close to an election, could sway voters. The usual formula ropes this speech into regulatory control within thirty or sixty days of an election.

The reform theory has been that the purpose of such communications is likely to influence an election, and if not the purpose, then its effect, and records have been assembled to establish that the spenders have in mind to make a mockery of the law and that stricter enforcement is therefore essential. In the thick of the election, it is argued, the candidate/issue line distinction does not hold, and the aims of campaign finance laws, both limitations and disclosure, should control. The Supreme Court has trimmed back this theory, and a now complex jurisprudence allows for election season-specific regulation of communications “susceptible of no reasonable interpretation other than as an appeal to vote for or against a specific candidate.” Wisconsin Right to Life v. Federal Election Commission, 551 U.S. 449, 469-470 (2007).

In the current election, the Trump candidacy will test acceptance of the basic reform tenet about the election season regulation of issues speech.  With the debate about Trump has come a debate about the package of stances that has come to be known as “Trumpism.” A number of his supporters have defined it as “ secure borders, economic nationalism, interests-based foreign policy, and above all judging every government action through a single lens: does this help or harm Americans?” It is recognized that the program cannot be argued, for or against, without reference to Trump: “For now, the principal vehicle of Trumpism is Trump.”  And Trump critics, ones as severe as Paul Krugman, recognize the “Trumpism” behind Trump.

The Supreme Court will soon decide whether to take up a major case about disclosure and this has received little attention—far less than it should. At issue is the clarification of how far government authority extends in requiring the disclosure of the financing of “issues speech”--speech or just information about candidates’ positions that does not involve engaging in advocacy of their election or defeat. There are reasons why the case might have been overlooked: it involves a small organization in a small state, and the activity concerns state and local, not federal (much less presidential), candidates. Perhaps, also, because it is “just” about disclosure, this case might be supposed to pose little danger of harm to anyone’s rights or legitimate expectations.

This is serious business. As the states move along with their own reform programs, and as litigation proceeds under different standards applied by different circuits and diminishing consistency in the treatment of federal and state or local-level enactment, disclosure doctrine is losing its coherence, and key constitutional distinctions once taken for granted are being rapidly eroded. One disturbing result: the “big” and sophisticated spenders at the federal level are more protected than the “little guy” at the levels below.

In the case in question, Delaware Strong Families v. Denn, the speech took the form of a Voter Guide that reproduced positions supplied by the candidates themselves, or in the case of candidates who declined to cooperate, their stated positions drawn from the public record. DSF is a 501(c)(3) barred from endorsing candidates, unlike an affiliated (c)(4) that may and does. There is no allegation that the (c)(3) is evading the prohibition on partisan speech. Delaware has enacted a disclosure law that applies to this Guide, requiring the disclosure of DSF donors who have given over $100 over a four- year period. The law covers all speech referring to candidates, whether by broadcast, mail or Internet, within 30 days of a primary election or 60 days of a general. It is triggered by the expenditure of more than $500 without regard to the size of the audience.

DSF sued and won in district court, then suffered a reversal of fortune in the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. The short opinion issued by the Third Circuit is striking in its breadth and, one might say, daring. It looks past the critical Buckley distinction between express and issue advocacy, apparently in the belief that, on this point, the 1976 decision has been overtaken by the decisions in McConnell and Citizens United, especially the latter, which it reads to allow for the regulation of any issues speech that could influence voter choice. So, on the assumption that its position is well supported by recent developments in the constitutional law, the Third Circuit embraced this view:

By selecting issues on which to focus, a voter guide that mentions candidates by name and is distributed close to an election is, at a minimum, issue advocacy. Thus, the disclosure requirements can properly apply to DSF’s Voter Guide…”

793 F.3d 304, 309 (July 16, 2015)

The State of Delaware has joined with reform organizations to defend this proposition. It concedes that the statute is expansive in reach, sweeping in smaller organizations and small-scale spending. But it justifies aggressive disclosure policy in a state the size of Delaware, where a little spending goes a long way. It contends that states have the right to decide how much spending is effective in the local conditions in which it occurs, taking in account the size of the electorate and other factors, and to apply disclosure requirements accordingly.   And the states can conclude that issues speech—in this case, the duplication of material the candidates supply –triggers mandatory disclosure of small donors in the interests of an informed electorate.

To the extent that large contributions are given to secure a political quid pro quo from current and potential office holders, the integrity of our system of representative democracy is undermined. Although the scope of such pernicious practices can never be reliably ascertained, the deeply disturbing examples surfacing after the 1972 election demonstrate that the problem is not an illusory one. 

Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S 1, 27.  

This was the magnitude of the conclusion that the Supreme Court drew about the prevalence or appearance of corruption when it upheld the contribution limitations of the Federal Election Campaign Act. The corruption problem was “not… illusory” but its scope could ‘never’ be pinned down.  The Court then cited to the decision of the court below that had offered a few example of pernicious behavior with campaign funds in the 1972 presidential election. That was enough.

In the years following, enough has not proven to be as good as a feast.  And in search of the feast, anyone with a point to make about the campaign finance laws has been pursuing conclusive data to support it.  Corruption, or the absence of corruption, or the different definitions and measures of corruption, have all occasioned argument about the evidence, as has the related but different project of proving the “appearance” of corruption.  Argument about the evidence has yet to be settled and there's every reason to believe that they never will be.

The related but still distinguishable argument about political inequality has meant the same search for clinching proof that policy follows money and makes for a “rigged” system.  This week, the Center for Competitive Politics took after a widely reported paper about the correlation between the aspirations of the wealthy and the manufacture of public policy.  Noting that Rick Hasen and Larry Lessig had made use of the paper in arguing for a political equality theory of regulation, the CCP cited to critics of the scholarship and its conclusions.  In this critical view, which CCP evidently favors, there is substantial agreement across income groups about policy.  So the study that purportedly shows that we have a democracy of the rich cannot survive close scrutiny. CCP suggests that this should bring sharply into question the “lofty solutions” of reformers.

The Louisiana Republican Party has enlisted Jim Bopp to mount a challenge to campaign finance restrictions on state political parties and so it is widely assumed that this is a Trojan Horse lawsuit with much wider significance for the survival of McCain-Feingold.  And of course if the three-judge court, then eventually the Supreme Court, decide the case a certain way, it could well help doom the 1970’s reforms--if not immediately, then eventually.  Rick Hasen, among others, has embraced the doomsday scenario, and the reform community has communicated to the three-judge court just this view of the stakes.

All of this may be true but this case and likely others to follow point to the costs of the bitter, stalemated discussion of campaign finance policy.  Louisiana and its lawyers have a reasonable case against the regulatory burdens on state parties: they stress that the dissatisfaction with aspects of these rules is bipartisan.  Thoughtful observers have concluded, as Brookings scholars recently did, that reforms are required.

But on this, as on other campaign finance issues, there is little likelihood of progress: no serious legislative engagement and, outside the Congress, a sharply divided political debate that mainly sorts out into hardline “reform” and “anti-reform” camps. The fight has largely moved to the courts, and from the reformers’ perspective, and with some uncertainty after Justice Scalia’s passing, this serves to put at risk the entire Buckley framework.  But if the outcome there is muddled or inconclusive, what will continue is the slow, steady rot of a regulatory regime characterized by ambiguity, complexity and evasion.  Neither of the alternatives is desirable.