Campaign Finance Reform Series: This paper is one of a series of papers issued by the Brennan Center for Justice exploring issues of money and politics.
Discussion about reform of the campaign finance process begins, and often ends, with the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1 (1976).
Since, reasoned the Buckley Court, most campaign speech requires the spending of money, any attempt to limit campaign spending must be analyzed, for constitutional purposes, as if it were an effort to limit political speech itself.
