IRVINE, Calif. (Nov. 13, 2023) — The University of California, Irvine School of Law (UCI Law) Center for Empirical Research on the Legal Profession (CERLP) is hosting an online discussion with center Co-Director and Professor of Law Ann Southworth on her forthcoming book available for pre-order, “Big Money Unleashed: The Campaign to Deregulate Election Spending” (University of Chicago Press 2023). Moderated by Swethaa Ballakrishnen, UCI Law Professor and CERLP Co-Director, the discussants include:
John Bliss, Assistant Professor, University of Denver Sturm College of Law
Bryant Garth, Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus and CERLP Co-Director, UCI Law
Richard L. Hasen, Professor of Law and Political Science and Director, Safeguarding Democracy Project, UCLA Law
Mary Ziegler, Martin Luther King Jr. Professor of Law, UC Davis School of Law
WHAT: Publisher’s Description for “Big Money Unleashed”
The story of how the First Amendment became an obstacle to campaign finance regulation – a history that began much earlier than most imagine.
Americans across party lines believe that public policy is rigged in favor of those who wield big money in elections. Yet, legislators are restricted in addressing these concerns by a series of U.S. Supreme Court decisions finding that campaign finance regulations violate the First Amendment.
“Big Money Unleashed” argues that our current impasse is the result of a long-term process involving many players. Naturally, the justices played critical roles — but so did the attorneys who hatched the theories necessary to support the legal doctrine, the legal advocacy groups that advanced those arguments, the wealthy patrons who financed these efforts, and the networks through which they coordinated strategy and held the Court accountable.
Drawing from interviews, public records and archival materials, “Big Money Unleashed” chronicles how these players borrowed a litigation strategy pioneered by the NAACP to dismantle racial segregation and used it to advance a very different type of cause.
WHEN: Thursday, November 16, 2023, 3:00-4:00 p.m. (PST)
WHERE: Online registration to attend the event here.
WHO: Professor Southworth teaches and writes on the legal profession and lawyers who serve causes, with an emphasis on lawyers’ norms, professional identities, practices, organizations and networks. She participated in designing UCI Law’s required first-year course on the American legal profession, and is the co-author, with Catherine Fisk, of an interdisciplinary textbook, “The Legal Profession,” which is now in its second edition. She has published numerous articles on civil rights and poverty lawyers, lawyers involved in national policymaking, and advocates for conservative and libertarian causes, as well as a book on the conservative legal movement, “Lawyers of the Right: Professionalizing the Conservative Coalition” (University of Chicago Press 2008). Her new book, “Big Money Unleashed: The Campaign to Deregulate Election Spending,”explores the roles that lawyers, advocacy organizations, and their patrons have played in the creation of U.S. Supreme Court doctrine invalidating campaign finance laws on First Amendment grounds. It will be published by the University of Chicago Press in December 2023.
Prior to joining the founding faculty at UCI Law, she was a law professor at Case Western Reserve and an affiliated scholar at the American Bar Foundation. She has been a visiting professor at Harvard and UCLA. She clerked for Judge Stanley A. Weigel and practiced at Morrison & Foerster, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and the U.S. Department of Justice. She received her B.A. and J.D. degrees from Stanford University.
MEDIA CONTACTS:
Colleen Taricani, Assistant Dean for Communications, ctaricani@law.uci.edu
Aditi Mukherji, Communications & PR Manager, amukherji@law.uci.edu