The Real Problem With Citizens United: Campaign Finance, Dark Money, and Shadow Parties

Abstract

I want to begin by thanking Marquette University Law School and the organizers of the Boden Lecture for inviting me here today. It's an honor to be invited to deliver a lecture named after such an illustrious dean. And it's an honor to be invited by Dean Joseph Kearney, who is not just a distinguished dean in his own right but someone known in the legal world for his integrity and decency. Even back in the days when we clerked together, he held the respect of every clerk at the Supreme Court. It has been especially lovely to watch him during the last twenty-four hours. There's an old saw in election circles that one campaigns in poetry and governs in prose, and it's been a delight to watch Dean Kearney move seamlessly from one to the other. When he speaks about the students, the faculty, or the mission of Marquette Law School, it's all poetry. And yet Dean Kearney is also the person who instructed me that this talk should be forty-three minutes long.