Campaign Finance Law and the First Amendment
Week 4 | W, F | Hultquist 101 | Ages 14 and up
These classes will explore the history and potential future of campaign finance law, as seen through the eyes of a long-term litigator of key Supreme Court cases on this subject. Because the Court has long viewed restrictions on money spent on elections as equivalent to direct restraints on speech, its rulings have begun with the premise that these laws infringe on First Amendment rights. In the instructor’s view, however, reasonable campaign finance laws actually promote First Amendment values, and the Court has fundamentally misunderstood these laws. The first day of the class will focus on the history and current status of our campaign finance laws, and the second day will focus on how these laws could be better understood with a more robust and enlightened interpretation of the First Amendment.
Class Times
David Kolker
For nearly 20 years, David Kolker worked at the Federal Election Commission, where he specialized in appellate litigation and for several years led the agency’s Litigation Division. He worked on many cases decided by the Supreme Court, including the infamous Citizens United decision in 2010. He is currently Senior Counsel at the Campaign Legal Center, which he joined in 2015. He began his legal career in the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice. David is a graduate of Yale (B.A.) and Harvard Law School (J.D.).
