Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review“Drawing on over fifty interviews with lawyers in the trenches,
Big Money Unleashed details the decades-long battle to leverage the First Amendment in order to corrode the guardrails that protect our democracy from the influence of personal and corporate mega-money. Carefully researched and compellingly argued,
Big Money Unleashed is a must-read for lawyers, academics, and everyday citizens concerned for our democracy.” -- Amanda Hollis-Brusky | coauthor of "Separate but Faithful: The Christian Right's Radical Struggle to Transform Law & Legal Culture"
"Ann Southworth’s
Big Money Unleashed is a
tour de force, a must-read account of how lawyers and their clients weaponized the First Amendment to allow big money to flow into American politics despite repeated congressional efforts to stanch its flow. Southworth takes us behind the scenes to see the strategies used by lawyers, and their calculated interactions with judges and clients, to make profound and deleterious legal and social change." -- Richard L. Hasen | author of "A Real Right to Vote: How a Constitutional Amendment Can Safeguard American Democracy"
"How did the Supreme Court become a major obstacle to the regulation of money in elections?
Big Money Unleashed shows us how the sausage got made in this critical area of First Amendment doctrine. This incisive, deeply researched study by a premier scholar of conservative legal mobilization illuminates the long-game strategies and processes that are transforming American constitutional law and politics." -- Ken I. Kersch | Boston College
Table of ContentsIntroduction: $peech
Part 1: The Campaign
1. The Players and Process
2. Taking Campaign Finance Reform to Court
3. Charting a Better Path
4. Winning in the Roberts Court
Part 2: Themes and Implications
5. Strange Bedfellows?
6. Different Constitutional Universes
7. Issues of Accountability
8. Continuing Battles
Conclusion: Big Money Unleashed
Acknowledgments
Appendix
Notes
Bibliography
Index
