What Legal Experts Are Saying About Buckley

"The [Buckley] decision was a mistake, unsupported by precedent and contrary to the best understanding of prior First Amendment jurisprudence. ... It misunderstood not only what free speech really is but what it really means for free people to govern themselves."   Ronald Dworkin, noted constitutional scholar.

"Money is property; it is not speech. ...The right to use one's own money to hire gladiators, or to fund 'speech by proxy,' certainly merits significant constitutional protections.  These property rights, however, are not entitled to the same protections as the right to say what one pleases."  Supreme Court Justice Stevens concurring with the Nixon v. Missouri Government PAC ruling, January 24, 2000.

"It is quite wrong to assume that the net effect of limits on contributions and expenditures--which tend to protect equal access to the political arena, to free candidates and their staffs from the interminable burden of fundraising, and to diminish the importance of repetitive 30-second commercials--will be adverse to the interest in informed debate protected by the First Amendment."  Supreme Court Justices Stevens and Ginsburg dissenting to the Colorado Republican Party v. FEC decision June 26, 1996.

"Buckley has not worked. ... The melancholy history of campaign finance in Buckley's wake shows what can happen when [the Courts] intervene in the dynamics of speech and expression by inventing an artificial scheme of our own."  Supreme Court Justice Kennedy dissenting to the Nixon v. Shrink Missouri Government PAC ruling, January 24, 2000.

"[Campaign limits are needed] to maintain confidence in self-government, and to prevent the erosion of democracy which comes from a popular view of government as responsive only or mainly to special interests.  A court that is concerned with public alienation and distrust of the political process cannot fairly deny to the people the power to tell the legislators to implement this one word principle: enough!"  Judge Harold Leventhal, District Judge who upheld a 1974 law setting mandatory limits on campaign expenditures and contributions before the Supreme Court overturned expenditure limits in Buckley v. Valeo. 

"Without limits on total expenditures, campaign costs will inevitably and endlessly escalate. ... Besides backing up the contribution provisions, expenditure limits have their own potential for preventing the corruption of federal elections themselves."  Supreme Court Justice White dissenting in Buckley v. Valeo.

"Over two decades ago, the United States Supreme Court, in Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1 (1976), declared mandatory campaign expenditure limits unconstitutional on First Amendment grounds.  We... believe the time has come for that holding to be revisited and reversed.... As state attorneys general--many of us elected--we believe the experience of campaigns teaches the lesson that unlimited campaign spending threatens the integrity of the election process.... [I]t is the absence of limits on campaign expenditures--not the restrictions--which strike 'at the core of our electoral process and of the First Amendment freedoms.'"  January 1997 statement from 24 state attorneys general, including Grant Woods (R-AZ) and Tom Miller (D-IA) who have called for the reversal of Buckley.

"Nothing in the First Amendment...commits us to the dogma that money is speech.... Far from stifling First Amendment values, [campaign limits] actually promote them.  In place of unlimited spending, [limits] encourage all to emphasize less expensive face-to-face communications efforts, exactly the kind of activities that promote real dialog on the merits and leave much less room for manipulation and avoidance of the issues."  Judge Skelly Wright in the Yale Law Journal 85:1005 (1979).

"The First Amendment is not a vehicle for turning this country into a plutocracy,"  Joseph L. Rauh, civil rights leader referring to the Buckley vs. Valeo ruling.

- The 1976 Buckley Decision 

- Who is James Buckley?