To appreciate the tortured path of the efforts to control the power of money in American politics from the passage of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act in 2002 to January’s Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which reversed much of that law and undermined a few others, we must first understand […]

Europe’s strength lies in its diversity of history and of geography, but its weakness lies there as well.

Since 1976, when the Supreme Court decided the seminal case of Buckley v. Valeo, the Justices have been locked in what both sides see as a Manichean struggle over the constitutionality of campaign finance regulation. On one side are those Justices who view the world of politics as fraught with corruption and undue access for […]

The Supreme Court’s January 21, 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission struck me with a case of double vision. The decision said that corporations and labor unions have as much right as individuals to spend unlimited amounts for political advocacy. I cannot see corporations as being equivalent to natural persons and therefore […]

The European project is a global blueprint for social change, environmental protection and supranational governance. Yet nobody talks about Europe in such glowing terms today. Why has the shine come off the apple?

For a host of reasons, the European project, one of the most impressive international achievements of the past fifty years, is in deep crisis. “Malaise”, a word made famous by President Jimmy Carter in the 1970s, now seems the most apt description of the European Union’s mood.