Money, Politics, and the First Amendment: Fifty Years of Supreme Court Decisions and Campaign Finance Reforms

2026 will be the fiftieth anniversary of the landmark Buckley v. Valeo Supreme Court decision that
fundamentally reshaped the role of money in politics in the US. In that decision, the Court ruled that
restrictions on candidate campaign spending were violations of the First Amendment. In Money, Politics, and the First Amendment, Lee Bollinger and Geoffrey Stone have gathered a cast of eminent professors, judges, and politicians, including Senators Amy Klobuchar and Sheldon Whitehouse, to analyze the initial decision and its long aftermath in the fullest scope possible.

Lee C. Bollinger served as Columbia University's 19th president from 2002 to 2023. He is Seth Low Professor of the University, a member of the Columbia Law School faculty, and one of the nation's foremost First Amendment scholars.

Geoffrey R. Stone is the Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. Mr. Stone joined the faculty in 1973, after serving as a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. He is a preeminent constitutional law scholar.