Buckley v. Valeo is the most important campaign finance case ever decided by the Supreme Court.
Every subsequent case and every legislative attempt at reform operates under the framework
established in Buckley.
Buckley considered the constitutionality of the Federal Election Campaign Act, FECA, which
imposed several restrictions on the financing of federal campaigns, including restrictions
on both how campaigns could acquire money and how campaigns and others could spend money
in promoting the election or defeat of federal candidates.
The First Amendment protects Americans' rights to free speech and free press.
When someone wants to reach an audience with speech, that person has to expend resources
in order to develop the speech and in order to distribute the speech to a potential audience.
FECA did not directly tell people that they couldn't speak.
But it did tell them that they couldn't raise a certain amount of money, and it told them
that they couldn't spend a certain amount of money in certain ways.
Therefore, it interfered with the ability of people to collect money and spend that
money in producing and distributing speech.
Therefore, Senator Buckley and the others who challenged the law said that FECA interfered
with their Fist Amendment rights, because it made it much more difficult for them to
make speech and deliver it to an audience.
The key question in Buckley v. Valeo was the extent to which the First Amendment prohibits
the government from interfering with campaign financing.
As the Court decided Buckley v. Valeo it turned out that the answer to that question was quite
complex.
Although the First Amendment was implicated by campaign finance restrictions, the First
Amendment was not violated by all of them.
Rather, the Court concluded that there was a very important interest in eliminating corruption,
or the appearance of corruption.
And that limitations on contributions could be necessary to serve that end.
However, the Court concluded that the federal law's restrictions on campaign expenditures,
a much more direct limitation on speech, were unconstitutional because of the interference
that they placed on First Amendment rights.
Having concluded that expenditure limits present such a manifest threat to core political expression,
the Court struck down the limits that FECA placed on individuals' ability to spend money
independently of the candidates.
The Court also struck down limits on the expenditures that could be made by the campaigns and by
the candidates themselves.
The Court upheld, however, FECA's restrictions on contributions, as well as its requirements
that donors and some speakers disclose their identities, so that the public could learn
who was supporting each candidate.
The contribution limits, the Court reasoned, were closely related to the government's compelling
interest in minimizing corruption or the appearance of corruption.
By corruption, the Court meant a quid pro quo, the exchange of a contribution for favorable
treatment by the candidate once in office.
Limiting contributions to $1,000 per election, the limit has since been raised and is now
$2,800, meant that no donor could give so much money that the officeholder would be
beholden to the contributor.
In sum, the Court made three conclusions.
Number one, restrictions on campaign financing do trigger First Amendment protection.
Number two, despite that, limits on campaign contributions are constitutional because they
are designed to limit corruption or the appearance of corruption.
And three, restrictions on the expenditure of money by campaigns themselves or by individuals
independent of the campaigns are unconstitutional because they present a direct infringement
on free speech rights.
Buckley and its distinction between contributions and expenditures continue to shape our campaign
finance law and our understanding of the ways that the Constitution's protection of free
speech applies to campaign financing.