Federal Election Commission, a dispute over the airing of an anti-Hillary Clinton movie-documentary in 2008 that was produced by a conservative group funded with corporate money. The seismic shift came in the case of Citizens United v. That seeming consensus began unraveling in 2007, and collapsed dramatically in January 2010 when the Supreme Court, voting 5-4, struck down major laws and precedents that restricted independent expenditures in campaigns by corporations and unions. Most campaign-finance measures passed by Congress, even though they touched on core political speech, were upheld by the Supreme Court. Though First Amendment concerns were always present, the perceived need for limits and rules in the interest of minimizing the perceived corrupting influence of money in politics usually took precedence.
Campaign Finance Overview Specific Topics: Online campaign ads Judicial campaign speechīy Tony Mauro, First Amendment Center Legal Correspondentįor more than 30 years after the Watergate scandal in the early 1970s, Congress and the Supreme Court were mostly on the same page concerning campaign-finance regulation.
