McCain Calls WRTL Decision an Narrow Exception

Sen. John McCain called the Supreme Court's Wisconsin Right to Life decision regrettable and then said that the Court carved out "a narrow exception by which some corporate and labor expenditures can be used to target a federal candidate in the days and weeks before an election." I don't that in the end, McCain will call this a narrow carve out. When the genuine issue ads start running in the weeks leading up to election, campaign finance reformers are going to be screaming and filing suits about this narrow exception.

In the end, the Court's decision is a big win for free speech, particularly political speech.

Bob Bauer has initial reactions not too dissimilar from mine (which makes me feel good). Rick Hasen is not happy and writes:

What's next? Expect a full, frontal attack on McConnell, likely manufactured by Jim Bopp, as invited by Justice Alito (not to mention Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas). Within a few years, expect the Court to take another campaign contributions case, revisit Randall, and reconsider whether even higher contribution limits violate the First Amendment.

In this Prof. Hasen may be right, a challenge to the contritubions limits may be in the offering. As I have argued before, in the modern age of almost near instantaneous disclosure being possible, a no-limits, full-disclosure model of campaign finance may be possible. To be sure, given that campaign finance limits don't actually prevent corruption (see, Ney, Cunningham and potentially Jefferson, et al,) the government is going to have to come up with a better rationale for contribution limits.

A brief thought about "what is all means" is that the Roberts Court, particuarly the four conservative Justices and Kennedy may be on a movement to rolling back some of the silly restrictions on speech in general that have become the vogue. It is probably too early to tell on all speech fronts (given the Morse case decided today), but it is probably a good move.