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30 Const. Comment. 391 (2015)
That We Are Underlings: The Real Problems in Disciplining Political Spending and the First Amendment

handle is hein.journals/ccum30 and id is 395 raw text is: THAT WE ARE UNDERLINGS: THE REAL PROBLEMS IN DISCIPLINING POLITICAL SPENDING AND THE FIRST AMENDMENT Jedediah Purdy * We're gathered at the intersection of professional reason and popular passion. The roughly two-thirds of Americans who have said they strongly oppose Citizens United 'don't have a theory of the First Amendment;2 they have a felt sense that the decision is an emblem of the political condition that unites Tea Partiers, Occupiers, and the Warren wing of the Democratic Party in shared disgust: the superior political influence and access of big business and great fortunes. This is the condition, or a subset of the condition, that Larry Lessig and Zephyr Teachout call corruption rightly understood: structural corruption that tethers the attention and loyalty of officials to the concerns of their financial patrons.3 We're being asked to apply our special tools and questions- conceptual coherence, doctrinal workability, alertness to unintended consequences, and clashing values - to a problem that popular passion has put on the agenda: we are discussing how, and how far, this popular sentiment can take constitutional form. On these questions I have little to add to what others have said on this panel and throughout the day. I think there is room in a sensible constitutional scheme to limit money's role in politics. I have no strong opinion about whether our doctrinal route should be an expanded conception of corruption, which starts from the * Robinson 0. Everett Professor Law, Duke University School of Law. Thanks to my co-panelist Larry Tribe and to David Grewal, Larry Lessig, and Zephyr Teachout for helping me to understand my thinking on this topic. 1. Citizens United v. FEC, 558 U.S. 310 (2010). 2. Dan Eggen, Poll: Large Majority Opposes Supreme Court's Decision on Campaign Financing, WASH. POST (Feb. 17, 2010, 4:38 PM), http://www.washingtonpost .com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/17/AR2010021701151.html. 3. See ZEPHYR TEACHOUT, CORRUPTION IN AMERICA 276-90 (2014) (setting out an anti-corruption principle as the basis of campaign finance regulation); Lawrence Lessig, Out-Posting Post, in ROBERT C. POST, CITIZENS DIVIDED 97-105 (2014) (setting out a version of the anti-corruption principle).

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