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2 Election L.J. 1 (2003)

handle is hein.journals/enlwjr2 and id is 1 raw text is: ELECTION LAW JOURNAL
Volume 2, Number 1, 2003
© Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.
Editorial
The Party Line
DANIEL H. LOWENSTEIN and RICHARD L. HASEN

WITH THIS ISSUE, we begin our second vol-
ume. Our first year of publication has
been an eventful period for election law. Dur-
ing that period, most states and localities
adopted new redistricting plans and the
decade's round of redistricting litigation got
under way. Prompted by the 2000 election con-
troversy, many   states adopted   important
changes in their voting systems. Congress
passed the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of
2002, the first major change in the federal cam-
paign finance law since 1979, and lawsuits
challenging its constitutionality were filed.
And the Supreme Court decided an important
case regarding the conflicting interests of states
in policing the conduct of candidates for the ju-
diciary and of those candidates in speaking
freely during their election campaigns. All
these, as well as other developments, have re-
ceived or will receive extensive commentary in
the Election Law Journal.
In this issue, emphasis is on campaign fi-
nance regulation, though other issues are not
neglected. We begin with an article by Ned Fo-
ley. One of the most important issues in the lit-
igation over the BCRA will be the constitu-
tional challenge to Congress' effort to bring
issue advocacy under the federal disclosure
and regulatory requirements. Foley argues that
however the Supreme Court may rule on this
issue, the meaning of express advocacy for
and against candidates will have enduring im-
portance. He also argues that the scope of ex-
press advocacy is considerably broader than
many have assumed-including the Fifth Cir-
cuit Court of Appeals in a recent decision that
Foley criticizes.

Whatever one's views about the substance of
campaign finance regulation, few will deny
that the manner in which the regulations are
enforced can either make them work better or
heighten their deficiencies. Considering the im-
portance of the subject, enforcement has been
one of the most understudied aspects of elec-
tion law. In the last few years, enforcement has
begun to receive more attention. We are
pleased that the Election Law Journal has con-
tributed to this development, beginning with
the important article by Brad Smith and
Stephen Hoersting in the second issue of our
first volume, and continuing in this issue with
an article by Todd Lochner, one of the leading
specialists on enforcement issues. Lochner
notes that underenforcement and overenforce-
ment can both be serious problems, but argues
that underenforcement is harder to remedy. He
draws on one of the classics of American liter-
ature for a partial solution.
In our third issue, we published a sympo-
sium on campaign finance organized by the
Brennan Center for Justice, an organization that
supports strengthened regulation. In this issue,
we publish a symposium organized by the
James Madison Center for Free Speech, an or-
ganization that supports interpretation of the
First Amendment to protect against strength-
ened regulation. We thank Jim Bopp and
Raeanna Moore for their efforts in organizing
the symposium and welcome inquiries from
other groups with an interest in organizing
similar symposiums on election law topics.
The first article in the symposium is by Herb
Alexander, one of the pioneers among political
scientists in examining the role of money in pol-

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