From an Institute for Free Speech symposium on the 50th anniversary of Buckley, which I've been cross-posting; this is by Prof. Joel M. Gora (Brooklyn Law School), who was one of the lawyers who argued Buckley (on behalf of the ACLU) before the Supreme Court:
It is an honor to participate in this celebration of the 50th anniversary of the landmark case of Buckley v. Valeo. I have been privileged to spend my entire professional career working in the area of constitutional law, and especially the protections of the First Amendment. As a full-time lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union for a decade, and then as a volunteer lawyer for many years after, I started my teaching career at Brooklyn Law School. I estimate that I have worked on more than 100 Supreme Court cases, the majority of them dealing with rights under the First Amendment. Of all those cases, the one I am proudest to have worked on, and the one I think has had the greatest positive impact on political freedom, is the Buckley case decided by the Supreme Court on January 30, 1976. It was a watershed moment for the Court, and for the country.
Years later, when politicians sought to pass increasingly restrictive federal campaign finance laws, a Democratic leader was asked about whether they posed a problem under the First Amendment. His response was, in effect, you can either have free speech or fair and healthy elections, but you can't have both. My response was that precisely the opposite was true: You can't have one without the other.
Free speech is not the enemy of democracy; free speech is the engine of democracy. It is the most powerful political tool we have to control the government. To allow the government to control free speech is to take away that most powerful tool. That was what was at stake in the Buckley case. And the Court did an outstanding job, but not a perfect one, of protecting that vital tool.
The Origin Story: Five Years Earlier
