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Yale Law School Faculty Scholarship
1-1-1998
Money and Politics
Owen M. Fiss
Yale Law School
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Fiss, Owen M., "Money and Politics" (1998). Faculty Scholarship Series. Paper 1320.
http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/fss_papers/1320
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ESSAY
MONEY AND POLITICS
Owen AI. Fiss*
Professor Fiss argues that onZ'V mandatory public financing of electoral
campaigns can counteract the convsive influence of money on politics. The
greatest obstacle to an ~ffective public funding scheme is the Supreme Court's
decision in Buckley v. Valeo, which invalidated the ceiling on political
eXjJenditures enacted as part of the reform measure provolwd by Watergate.
Professor Fiss examines the Court First A mendment rationale for that decision, and finds it wanting. According to him, the Court did not give proper
heed to the constitutionaljJrinciple which ought t6 have been controllingnameZ'V, preserving the fullness of jmblic debate-and thus, created a rule
that interfered with the jJrojJcrfunctioning of American democracy.
s
Americans have long worri~d about the corrupting influence of
money on politics. Each election season brings a renewed interest in the
subject, as the amount spent on campaigns reaches shocking new heights
and new scandals are uncovered, but that interest inevitably subsides
before meaningful reform is achieved. The election of 1996 might be a
break in this familiar cycle, as the involvement of foreign interests in the
presidential campaign has given the suqject of campaign financing a special urgency and saliency-a new and perhaps more genuine opportunity
for reform has arisen. l We should take full advantage of this turn of
events, but stay ever mindful that the problem is money, not foreign
monev.
Electoral campaigns require enormous sums of money to hire staff,
conduct polls, cover expenses to travel this vast country, and prepare advertisements and place them in newspapers and on the airwaves. In the
1996 elections, more than $866 million was spent for these purposes. 2
For most of our history, candidates have financed their campaigns out of
/
:;: Sterling Professor of Law, Yale University. This Essay is based on a lecture to the
Eduardo Garcia Maynez Seminar in Mexico City on October 5, 1996. It has benefitted
enormously from the criticism and editorial assistance of Christopher Kutz and Gregory
Silbert.
1. See, e.g., Jamin B. Raskin, Dollar Democracy: Can We Stop It?, Nation, May 5,
1997, at 11; Symposium, The Pull of Money: New Directions for Campaign Finance
Reform, Boston Rev., Apr.-May 1997, at 3.
2. This figure represents total spending by all presidential candidates, and all
spending by the major political parties on presidential, congressional, state, and local
campaigns. See Financing the 1996 Presidential Campaign (visited Nov. 5, 1997) <http:! /
www.fec.gov/pres96/presgen1.htm> (on file with the Columbia Law Review). According to
Dick Morris, President Clinton's former campaign advisor, Clinton and the Democratic
National Committee spent more than $85 million on television advertising alone. See Dick
Morris, Behind the Oval Office: Winning the Presidency in the Nineties 138 (1997). Total
spending in 1996 by candidates for all offices, and by their advocates, has been estimated at
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