Jacob Sullum on Stephen Breyer’s Dangerously Broad Rationale for Campaign Finance Regulations

Last week the Supreme
Court overturned federal limits on the total amounts that
one person may contribute to candidates and political committees
during a single election cycle. “The Government may no more
restrict how many candidates or causes a donor may support than it
may tell a newspaper how many candi­dates it may endorse,” the
Court declared in an opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts.

But according to Justice Stephen Breyer, who wrote a dissenting
opinion that was joined by three of his colleagues, the
restrictions challenged in McCutcheon v. FEC are
perfectly compatible with the First Amendment, which “advances not
only the individual’s right to engage in political speech, but also
the public’s interest in preserving a democratic order in which
collective speech matters.” Jacob Sullum says the
idea that individual rights must be sacrificed for the sake of a
vaguely defined collective interest reflects the dangerously broad
agenda of campaign finance “reformers,” who seek to shape the
political debate so that it comports with their own notion of the
public good.

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