(CBS/AP) A sharply divided Supreme Court upheld key attributes of the nation’s new law intended to lessen the influence of cash in politics, ruling Wednesday that the government may blacklist unlimited donations to political parties.
Those donations, called “soft cash,” had become a mainstay of modern political campaigns, used to rally voters to the polls and to buy sharply worded television ads.
Supporters of the new law mentioned the donations from corporations, unions and wealthy individuals capitalized on a loophole in the existing, Watergate-era campaign cash system.
The court additionally upheld limitations on political ads in the weeks before an choice. The television and radio ads often feature harsh attacks by one politician contrary another or by groups running commercials contrary candidates.
The ruling builds “some legal certainty for the 2004 choice that didn’t exist before,” tells CBSNews.com Legal Analyst Andrew Cohen.
“At least now the candidates and political parties and contributors know what the rules are going forward and I think it will take until the 2006 choice cycle for the lawyers to find out ways around this ruling,” Cohen tells.
The so-called “soft money” is a catchall expression for cash that is not subject to existing federal caps on the amount individuals may give and which is outside the old law prohibiting corporations and labor unions from making direct campaign donations.
Federal choice regulators had approved soft cash donations outside those limitations so long as the cash went to buy get-out-the-vote tasks and other party building programs run by the political parties.
Supporters of the new law, called the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, mentioned that in practice, soft cash was funneled to influence special races for the House, Senate or the White House, and that donors, parties and candidates all knew it.
The court was divided on the complicated issue; 5 of the 9 justices voted to substantially uphold the soft cash ban and the ad limitations, which were the most significant attributes of the extensive new law.
Justices John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O’Connor, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer signed the main perspective barring candidates for federal office, this includes incumbent members of Congress or an incumbent president, from raising soft cash.
The majority additionally barred the national political parties from raising this kind of cash, and mentioned their affiliates in the individual states may not serve as conduits for soft cash.
Without soft cash, politicians and political parties may only take in donations that are earlier allowed in limited amounts, like a private individual’s small re-election donation to his or her local member of Congress.
That signifies no more trmendous checks from wealthy donors, and no contributions from the treasuries of corporations or labor unions.
The Supreme Court’s 300-page ruling on the 2002 campaign finance overhaul settles legal and constitutional challenges from both the political right and the left. despite the fact the reform effort was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Bush, lots politicians and others in the business of politics were leery of it.
The law is often known as “McCain-Feingold” ? named for its chief Senate sponsors, Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Russ Feingold, D-Wis. McCain built his maverick 2000 presidential campaign largely around the assertion that the old system of political cash laws was full of holes.
The new rules have been in force throughout the early stages of preparation for the 2004 selections for president and Congress. The high court ruling signifies those rules stay largely untouched as the political seasons heats up. The first delegate-selection contests are just weeks away, in January.
A reduce court panel of federal judges had issued its own, fractured ruling on the new law already this year, but the Supreme Court got the last word.
The justices cut short their summer vacation to hear an extraordinary 4 hours of oral arguments on the issue in early September. The court’s regular expression began a month later.
The case marked the court’s most detailed look in a generation at the difficult relationships among those who give and receive campaign money. The case additionally presented a simple question about the wisdom of the government policing political give and take.
The court has given government an vast role in the field on grounds that there is a fundamental national interest in rooting out corruption or even the appearance of it. That concern justifies restrictions on the liberty of speech, the court has mentioned.
