Campaign Finance: Balancing Political Inequality with Free Speech, with Rick Hasen

October 08, 2015
4:00 pm (reception follows at 5:15 pm)
Saxbe Auditorium, The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law 
RSVP requested. Register here to reserve your place.

Please join the Democracy Studies program for a lecture on Campaign Finance: Balancing Political Inequality with Free Speech, with Rick Hasen, Chancellor’s Professor of Law and Political Science, University of California, Irvine School of Law. OSU President, Dr. Michael V. Drake, will introduce Professor Hasen, who will discuss his new book, Plutocrats United: Campaign Money, the Supreme Court, and the Distortion of American Elections, due out from Yale University Press in January 2016.

Writing about one of today’s most divisive political issues, Hasen argues for a new focus and way forward on the issue of campaign financing: if the government is to ensure robust political debate, the Supreme Court should allow limits on money in politics to prevent those with great economic power from distorting the political process. Hasen argues that both left and right avoid the key issue of the new Citizens United era: balancing political inequality with free speech.

Richard Hasen writes the often-quoted Election Law Blog, was the founding co-editor of the quarterly peer-reviewed publication, Election Law Journal, and is a prolific author on election law issues.

The lecture is sponsored by The Ohio State University Democracy Studies program.