Buckley v. Valeo is Not What Ails American Democracy |
Free Speech
Those who blame Buckley for our current problems are wrong to do so. A contrary decision would have made things worse.
Ilya Somin | 1.22.2026 10:30 AM
This post is my contribution to the Institute for Free Speech symposium on the 50th anniversary of Buckley v. Valeo, which is jointly published by IFS and the Volokh Conspiracy blog:
This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of Buckley v. Valeo, the 1976 ruling in which the Supreme Court held that federal laws limiting private parties' expenditures on campaign-related speech violate the First Amendment. Critics blame Buckley for a host of current problems in our political system, such as the disproportionate political influence of wealthy people and the spread of misinformation. Our current political situation does indeed have serious flaws. But a contrary decision would not have averted these developments and would have made things much worse in many respects.
Had the Court accepted the fashionable argument that "money isn't speech," that decision would have gravely imperiled freedom of speech and other constitutional rights. Similar dangers would have arisen if the Court had maintained the rule that campaign-related free speech rights do not apply to corporations, which was eventually rejected in in subsequent case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010). Contrary decisions in these cases would also have exacerbated rather than ameliorated the problems of voter ignorance and misinformation. Nor would they have significantly reduced political inequality. A contrary decision would have exacerbated—rather than alleviated—the problems of voter ignorance and misinformation, while doing little to reduce political inequality.
Critics of Buckley, Citizens United, and other rulings protecting expenditures on campaign speech love to emphasize that "money isn't speech." That is true enough in a literal sense. But the exercise of almost every constitutional right depends on the use of resources for which monetary compensation is paid. Consider, for example, the right to use contraceptives upheld by the Supreme Court in Griswold v. Connecticut. Just as money isn't speech, money isn't contraception. But a law banning or severely restricting the use of money to purchase contraceptives would clearly violate the constitutional right upheld in Griswold. Otherwise, the government could effectively gut that right simply by barring or severely restricting the purchase of birth control devices.
The same is true of most other constitutional rights. For example, money isn't religion. But a law banning or restricting the use of money to fund religious institutions and services obviously violates the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.
Moreover, the vindication of constitutional rights often requires the filing of lawsuits, which almost always cost money. A law barring the expenditure of funds on such litigation clearly violates the Constitution, even though supporters of such legislation could inveigh that "money isn't litigation."
Consider the Trump........