Election Law Journal: Rules, Politics, and Policy

Abstract For most of American history, until the 1950s, courts treated paid lobbying as a civic wrong, not a protected First Amendment right. Lobbying was presumptively against public policy, and lobbying contracts were not enforced. Paid lobbying ...

Abstract In 2007, Congress passed the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act (HLOGA) in an attempt to slow the revolving door between Congress and the Washington lobbying industry with one year bans on contacts between the ex-staffers and their former ...

Abstract This article analyzes the convergence of campaign finance law and lobbying law that began in earnest under the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act (HLOGA) of 2007. Though the laws governing the field of campaign finance have historically ...

Abstract This paper argues that there are deep continuities between lobbying and campaign finance, all of which stem from the fact that we have “privatized” an essentially public function. In the United States, two of the most important activities a ...

Abstract In this article, we link a proposed tax reform with a substantive disclosure requirement to promote the kind of “information subsidy” that serves the public interest, while mitigating—at least to some extent—the distortion that may result from ...

Abstract This article considers how much outside influence matters to the constitutional analysis of state politics. It defends the political community principle applied in Bluman v. Federal Election Comm'n as an exception to the otherwise universal ...

Abstract In the United States it is taken for granted that members of the public should have access to information about their government. This access takes many forms, including the ability to obtain copies of government documents, the ability to attend ...

Abstract Our legal system has long been of two minds about lobbying. As far back as the Jacksonian Era, courts anxiously viewed the use of paid agents to influence government decision-making as a source of corruption. Yet courts have also long recognized ...

Abstract Based on a large-scale interview-based study of 98 randomly selected cases of lobbying in Washington from 1999 to 2003 (reported in Baumgartner et al. ), we found virtually no impact of money on outcomes. We believe that this counterintuitive ...

Abstract The perception of lobbyists as a corrupt, antidemocratic force for dishonest governance is rooted more in myth than fact. Lobbyists are adaptive, forward-thinking expert advocates who are vital to a healthy, self-correcting representative ...