|
Bradley A. Smith (born 1958) is a professor at Capital University Law School who served as Commissioner, Vice Chairman and Chairman of the Federal Election Commission (FEC) between 2000 and 2005. He is best known for his writing and activities opposing campaign finance regulation. ==Academic career and influence== A Michigan native, Smith received a B.A. from Kalamazoo College and a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1990. After briefly practicing law with the firm of Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease, Smith joined the faculty at Capital University Law School in Columbus, Ohio in the fall of 1993. Smith's breakthrough came in 1996, when the ''Yale Law Journal'' published his article, "Faulty Assumptions and Undemocratic Consequences of Campaign Finance Reform." In "Faulty Assumptions", Smith laid out a case against campaign finance regulation, arguing that efforts to regulate money in politics had been based on a series of incorrect beliefs about the effects of money in politics, and that as a result not only had "reform" failed to accomplish its objectives, it had made many of the problems worse. "Faulty Assumptions" can be considered one of the most influential articles published on campaign finance in the last quarter of the 20th century. The article, or others by Smith, have been cited in numerous recent Supreme Court decisions striking down campaign finance laws on Constitutional grounds, including ''Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.'' In 2010 ''The New York Times'' called Smith the "intellectual powerhouse" behind the movement to deregulate campaign finance. The importance of "Faulty Assumptions" lay in its blending of existing political science research with legal and constitutional theory. Before "Faulty Assumptions", most legal scholarship on campaign finance had followed a narrative that assumed the corruptive and anti-egalitarian effects of large campaign contributions and spending, and had then focused on the creating a legal regime to control those effects and justify regulation against First Amendment claims recognized by the Supreme Court in ''Buckley v. Valeo''. At the same time, these articles largely ignored a growing literature in political science based on empirical studies of campaign spending and regulatory regimes. Smith's contribution was to bring these two arms of scholarship together, blending the growing body of empirical data to the constitutional and legal principles laid out elsewhere. The result was to challenge the very foundation of campaign finance reform in both politics and constitutional law. Smith's analysis forced proponents of reform to rethink many basic assumptions, or at least to justify them against his critique. Smith followed "Faulty Assumptions" with a series of academic articles further developing and refining his unique view, the most important of which is "Money Talks: Speech, Corruption, Equality and Campaign Finance", which appeared in the ''Georgetown Law Journal'' in 1997. "Money Talks" continues in the vein of "Faulty Assumptions" but with greater emphasis on Constitutional analysis. Smith also wrote ''Unfree Speech: The Folly of Campaign Finance Reform'', a book published by the Princeton University Press in 2001. ''Unfree Speech'' consists largely of updated and reworked versions of Smith's prior law review articles, along with some new material. By the time ''Unfree Speech'' was published, both Smith and his campaign finance scholarship had become something of a Rorschach test for attitudes about campaign finance. The book met with near universal praise among opponents of regulation, such as columnist George Will, who called it "the Year's most important book on governance,"〔http://press.princeton.edu/titles/7030.html〕 and condemnation from supporters of regulation, with journalist Eliza Newlin Carney lambasting it as "facile and boggling."〔http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/nj/books2001-06-13.htm〕 Other scholars, including the British political scientist Michael Pinto-Duschinsky were more balanced and generally complimentary,〔http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/incomingFeeds/article765730.ece〕 but by the time of publication Smith had been appointed to the Federal Election Commission and the book was largely reviewed as a political tract, rather than as the scholarly manuscript Smith presumably intended. Nevertheless, ''Unfree Speech'' is an important academic work. It sold well enough to trigger the release of a paperback version in 2003. More importantly, ''Unfree Speech'' paved the way for later works. Before ''Unfree Speech'', most books on campaign finance focused on sources of campaign funding and the creation of ideal regulatory regimes. ''Unfree Speech'' paved the way for a number of scholarly books more skeptical of campaign finance and its underlying assumptions, most notably John Samples' "The Fallacy of Campaign Finance Reform," but also including "Money, Power, and Elections," and less directly, works such as Melvin Urofsky's "Money and Free Speech" and Ray LaRaja's "Small Change." 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Bradley Smith (law professor)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|