ABSTRACT
In Buckley vs. Valeo, the Supreme Court put the concept of corruption at the center of American campaign finance law. In this chapter, the author provides some sense of both the possibilities and the limits of understanding campaign finance as an issue of corruption. He briefly considers the concept of corruption and the ways in which academic commentators have explored it. The author analyzes how "corruption" has been employed in a series of Supreme Court cases beginning with Buckley. He defends what he call the "monetary influence" standard of corruption as the most appropriate one to use in controversies over campaign finance. This defense turns out to be a rather complex enterprise; it requires a turn back to the foundations of representative democracy. Any adequate standard of corruption in campaign finance must be grounded in a convincing theory of representation.
