Constitutional Issues in the Regulation of the Financing of Election Campaigns

The decisions sustaining campaign expenditures by corporations and organized groups are libertarian in the superficial sense that they sustain claims under the first amendment. Their effect, however, is to increase the influence of organized groups, especially of groups with access to money, and to diminish the voice of the individual. If liberty means the opportunity of the individual man or woman to express himself or herself in a society in which ideas are judged principally by their merit, increasing the relative influence of organizations and shrinking the attention paid to individual voices means a net loss of human freedom.