Democracy by the People: Reforming Campaign Finance in America

Description

Thanks to a series of recent US Supreme Court decisions, corporations can now spend unlimited sums to influence elections, Super PACs and dark money groups are flourishing, and wealthy individuals and special interests increasingly dominate American politics. Despite the overwhelming support of Americans to fix this broken system, serious efforts at reform have languished. Campaign finance is a highly intricate and complex area of the law, and the current system favors the incumbent politicians who oversee it. This illuminating book takes these hard realities as a starting point and offers realistic solutions to reform campaign finance. With contributions from more than a dozen leading scholars of election law, it should be read by anyone interested in reclaiming the promise of American democracy.

Eugene D. Mazo is Visiting Associate Professor of Law at Rutgers University, New Jersey. He is the editor of Election Law Stories (2016), a book that tells the history of the thirteen most important Supreme Court cases in election law. He serves as treasurer of the Section on Election Law and on the executive committee of the Section on Constitutional Law at the Association of American Law Schools. Mazo has taught at the law schools of the University of Baltimore, George Mason University, Virginia, the University of Maryland, and Wake Forest University, North Carolina. A graduate of Columbia College, Missouri, he holds a master's degree from Harvard University, Massachusetts, a doctorate in politics from the University of Oxford, and a law degree from Stanford University, California. Timothy K. Kuhner is Associate Professor of Law at the University of Auckland. He is the author of Capitalism v. Democracy: Money in Politics and the Free Market Constitution (2014), a book that received acclaim from Thomas Piketty, Lawrence Lessig, Erwin Chemerinsky, the Harvard Law Review, and the Law and Politics Book Review. Kuhner was previously Associate Professor of Law at the Georgia State University College of Law, a Fulbright Senior Scholar at the University of Barcelona, and a Thomas J. Watson Fellow in Latin America. He is a graduate of Bowdoin College, Maine and holds a J.D. and an LL.M. from Duke Law School, North Carolina.

'At a time when pay-to-play plutocrats and foreign presidential payoffs are choking off government by the people, the contributors to this timely collection are reviving the project of American democracy with a series of practical and viable reform proposals. In a dark time, we owe them thanks for bringing the light.' Jamie Raskin, Vice-Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, and American University, Washington 'Many of us are discouraged about a campaign finance system that has led to widespread distrust of our political process. Reform seems impossible because of entrenched interests and an unsympathetic Supreme Court. But this timely book shows that significant pragmatic change is achievable. Democracy by the People is required reading for citizens, activists and scholars alike - it is a tour de force.' Ann Ravel, Former Chair and Commissioner, Federal Election Commission, and Former Chair, California Fair Political Practices Commission 'Democracy by the People is insightful, innovative, and timely. With the Supreme Court unlikely to reverse course on campaign finance law anytime soon, this edited volume offers thought-provoking proposals that could significantly curtail the role of money in politics even without constitutional change. The analyses are lucid, novel, and present creative ideas for reforming campaign finance in America.' Adam Winkler, University of California, Los Angeles and author of We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights