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More than thirty states had spending limits as part of their campaign finance laws prior to 1974, when Congress enacted them at the federal level. While a lot less money was spent on campaigns then, voter turnout and civic involvement was generally higher than it is today. After the federal limits were passed as part of a comprehensive reform bill, the Supreme Court reviewed the law on a rushed basis, with little time to examine evidence about the impact of spending limits. In the infamous 1976 case Buckley v Valeo, the Court assumed that limiting candidate spending would reduce the public debate and that spending limits would not create a less corrupt electoral process. With twenty-twenty hindsight, it is clear that the Court was simply wrong in these conjectures. Even though the Buckley ruling was for federal races, most states and localities repealed their spending limits in its wake, rather than face a mountain of litigation to defend them in court. At the urging of non-partisan civic organizations like the Vermont Public Interest Research Group (VPIRG), the Vermont legislature bucked this trend of compliance in 1997. Vermont passed a law that included mandatory limits on campaign spending, a direct challenge to Buckley. In reviewing the Vermont law, a federal appeals court has ruled
that Buckley does not preclude all limits on campaign spending.
A Vermont right to life group appealed this case to the U.S. Supreme
Court on May 12, 2005. The Court announced it would take the case
on September 27, 2005. TheRestofUs.org, US PIRG, Common Cause, the League of Women Voters of the United States, AARP, Public Campaign, the Committee for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), and Union for Reform Judaism filed a "friend of the court" brief that urged the Supreme Court to uphold spending limits as a means for states to preserve representative democracy. You can read our brief here. A previous set of breifs had urged the Court to accept this case. Those include: TheRestofUs.org, US PIRG, Common Cause, the League of Women Voters of the United States, Public Campaign, Demos, the Committee for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), and ReclaimDemocracy.org filed a "friend of the court" brief that urged the Supreme Court to review this case. You can read our brief here. Read the brief submitted by Senators Jack Reed, Arlen Specter, Maria Cantwell, Chris Dodd, Richard Durbin, Edward Kennedy, Carl Levin, and Chuck Schumer. Read the brief submitted by Attorneys General from Connecticut, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, Montana, New York, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Wisconsion and Wyoming. Read the brief submitted by Secretaries of State from Oregon, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin. Read the brief submitted by the Brennan Center for Justice and state judges Read the brief submitted by former US Senators Bill Bradley and Alan Simpson. Learn more by visiting BuckBuckley.com
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