This memo outlines how the Justices lined up on the issues in Randall v. Sorrell, provides some analysis of the opinions, and touches on the implications for future reform efforts.

How and why justice is not blind in our nation's courts and what we can do about it.

Super PACs have fast become a favored tool for wealthy individuals and interests to drown out the voices of average citizens. 

Americans of all political backgrounds agree: there is way too much corporate money in politics. 

Outside spending organizations reported $1.11 billion in spending to the FEC through the final reporting deadline in the 2012 cycle. That’s already a 200% increase over total 2008 outside spending.

In 2012, just 61 large donors to Super PACs giving an average of $4.7 million each matched the $285.2 million in grassroots contributions from more than 1,425,500 small donors to the major party presidential candidates.

The extent of the money in politics problem, how we got here (from a legal perspective), and what we can do to create a democracy in which the strength of a citizen’s voice does not depend on the size of her wallet. 

In August 2011, Congress passed a strange piece of legislation intended to bind itself into the future. In spite of persistently high unemployment and an unremarkable deficit-to-GDP ratio, and in spite of public polling that consistently showed that creating jobs was  the American public’s top

McCutcheon struck down the limit on the total amount that one wealthy donor is permitted to contribute to all federal candidates, parties, and political action committees (PACs) combined.

Five years after the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United v. FEC decision, what are the roles of large donors and average voters in selecting and supporting candidates for Congress?