10 December 2003

Money Gets Laryngitis

The Supreme Court has just issued an opinion (PDF, 2.17mb) largely upholding the McCain-Feingold restrictions on campaign finance. If all you want to do is read the "official" summary—the Syllabus, which although prepared by the Clerk of the Court is not the law and is not precedential—you can find it in HTML format at Cornell's Legal Information Institute.

I need to read the opinion first (it's 300 pages, perhaps proving that we lawyers never use one word when twenty-five will do); although the connection may not be immediately obvious, the reasoning behind the opinion should be of interest to authors. In fact, based upon an AP news report describing the opinion, it may have some interesting indirect effects. The real issue, in the end, is whether donations of money are speech. More discussion later, after I read the opinion.