Campaign Finance: Is Money Speech?
What Role Does Money Play in Politics & Government?
Speaker: Maryam Judar

Money and American politics have long been intertwined.  Congress has passed legislation to regulate the ways that individuals and groups may give and spend money during campaigns, but with sporadic success.  This lesson provides an overview of the American election finance process with respect to corporate contributions to campaign speech and explores both sides of the issue from a competing values-based perspective.

How does this program relate to the First Amendment?
The last century has yielded a variety of divergent and often inconsistent views of the “corporation” within the field of law.  Corporations are considered to be legally “persons”—this is the principle underlining the limited liability of officers, directors, and shareholders of any corporate form.  While people are entitled to the protection of the First Amendment’s free speech guarantee, it is unclear to what extent corporations should enjoy that same protection because of the special, state-conferred benefits of the corporate form.  One such state-conferred benefit is the massive amounts of wealth corporations can amass during its lifetime.  In an era in which running a campaign involves massive amounts of money, to what extent can the government regulate financial contributions to campaigns?  In other words, if money equals speech, or even if we accept that it merely enables speech, is it constitutionally permissible to restrict speech through the regulation of campaign contributions?

In what ways is the program hands-on or interactive?
The legal framework behind regulating campaign contributions by corporations is rife with dichotomies, or schisms, if you will.  A prevailing tension is that between the right to free speech and Americans’ desire for a healthy campaign system.  This lesson is interactive in that it asks students to identify this and other competing values.