Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Another Bad Day for McCain-Feingold

Today the Supreme Court heard argument in Davis v. FEC.  The case involves a challenge to the so-called Millionaire's Amendment portion of McCain-Feingold.  The Amendment, as you'll recall, imposes additional campaign finance disclosure requirements on candidates for House and Senate who spend lots of their own money in a race and eases fundraising restrictions on their opponents (who, in practice, are usually incumbent Congressmen and Senators).  SCOTUSblog has a nice analysis of the argument here.  Though I haven't read the argument transcript yet, it seems that a majority of the Justices expressed serious doubts about the constitutionality of various provisions of the Amendment.

The SCOTUSblog writer expresses near-shock at the Justices' reaction; apparently prior to today's argument most commentators thought that the challenge --grounded, of course, in the First Amendment -- was a longshot.  (At the risk of being insufficiently humble, allow me to quickly point out that I offered a different prediction when cert was granted.)  More on Davis (and some long-promised broader thoughts on campaign finance regulation) after I get a chance to read the transcript.

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