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Big Money Unleashed

The Campaign to Deregulate Election Spending

Big Money Unleashed

The Campaign to Deregulate Election Spending

The story of how the First Amendment became an obstacle to campaign finance regulation—a history that began much earlier than most imagine.

Americans across party lines believe that public policy is rigged in favor of those who wield big money in elections. Yet, legislators are restricted in addressing these concerns by a series of Supreme Court decisions finding that campaign finance regulations violate the First Amendment.

Big Money Unleashed argues that our current impasse is the result of a long-term process involving many players. Naturally, the justices played critical roles—but so did the attorneys who hatched the theories necessary to support the legal doctrine, the legal advocacy groups that advanced those arguments, the wealthy patrons who financed these efforts, and the networks through which they coordinated strategy and held the Court accountable.

Drawing from interviews, public records, and archival materials, Big Money Unleashed chronicles how these players borrowed a litigation strategy pioneered by the NAACP to dismantle racial segregation and used it to advance a very different type of cause.

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Chicago Series in Law and Society

Law and Legal Studies: Law and Society

Political Science: American Government and Politics

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Reviews

"The book is very well written and meticulously documented. Every research library should have a copy."

Choice

"[Big Money] is a testament to Southworth’s careful scholarship and status as a scholar both sides respect that she was able to gain access to lawyers on this deeply polarizing political issue. The result is a rich and penetrating account of how lawyers on the right mobilize law for social change in contemporary America, using a playbook honed by left-wing organizations during the Civil Rights Era to weaken progressive causes and political power."

Scott L. Cummings | Jotwell

“Drawing on over fifty interviews with lawyers in the trenches, Big Money Unleashed details the decades-long battle to leverage the First Amendment in order to corrode the guardrails that protect our democracy from the influence of personal and corporate mega-money. Carefully researched and compellingly argued, Big Money Unleashed is a must-read for lawyers, academics, and everyday citizens concerned for our democracy.”

Amanda Hollis-Brusky | coauthor of "Separate but Faithful: The Christian Right's Radical Struggle to Transform Law & Legal Culture"

"Ann Southworth’s Big Money Unleashed is a tour de force, a must-read account of how lawyers and their clients weaponized the First Amendment to allow big money to flow into American politics despite repeated congressional efforts to stanch its flow. Southworth takes us behind the scenes to see the strategies used by lawyers, and their calculated interactions with judges and clients, to make profound and deleterious legal and social change."

Richard L. Hasen | author of "A Real Right to Vote: How a Constitutional Amendment Can Safeguard American Democracy"

"How did the Supreme Court become a major obstacle to the regulation of money in elections? Big Money Unleashed shows us how the sausage got made in this critical area of First Amendment doctrine. This incisive, deeply researched study by a premier scholar of conservative legal mobilization illuminates the long-game strategies and processes that are transforming American constitutional law and politics."

Ken I. Kersch | Boston College

Table of Contents

Introduction: $peech

Part 1: The Campaign
1. The Players and Process
2. Taking Campaign Finance Reform to Court
3. Charting a Better Path
4. Winning in the Roberts Court

Part 2: Themes and Implications
5. Strange Bedfellows?
6. Different Constitutional Universes
7. Issues of Accountability
8. Continuing Battles

Conclusion: Big Money Unleashed
Acknowledgments
Appendix
Notes
Bibliography
Index