[Mb-civic] High Court to Decide Campaign Finance Cases - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

High Court to Decide Campaign Finance Cases

By Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 28, 2005; Page A04

Campaign finance reform emerged as a major theme of the coming Supreme 
Court term yesterday, as the justices announced that they will rule on 
federal and state efforts to regulate campaign-season advertising by 
advocacy groups and to limit spending by candidates.

The cases present the court with its first opportunity to revisit key 
constitutional issues in campaign law since it issued a 5 to 4 decision 
in 2003 upholding the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, known as the 
McCain-Feingold law or BCRA.
Yesterday's decisions were produced by an eight-member court, because 
John G. Roberts Jr. has not yet been confirmed by the Senate to succeed 
the late Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist. They came out of the annual 
"long conference," at which the court considers thousands of appeal 
petitions that have accumulated during its summer recess.

Justice John Paul Stevens, the senior associate justice, presides over 
the court in the absence of a chief justice.

The first case is a challenge to provisions of the 2002 McCain-Feingold 
campaign law that prevent corporations or labor unions from buying ads 
with unregulated money about a specified candidate in the weeks just 
before an election.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/27/AR2005092700868.html
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