The forgotten 1976 Supreme Court ruling that made one group's dominance inevitable

U.S. President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump attend "Les Miserables" opening night at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., U.S., June 11, 2025. REUTERS/Kent Nishimura

When liberals and progressives argue that the ultra-rich have way too much power in U.S. politics, the Supreme Court case they often attack is 2010's Citizens United v. FEC. That hotly debated ruling equated campaign contributions with free speech, drawing strong criticism by then-Rep. Alan Grayson (the Florida Democrat who called it as "the worst Supreme Court decision since the Dred Scott case"), activist Ralph Nader and many others. On the right, conservative Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) said he was "disappointed" by the ruling.

But the New York Times' Danny Hakim, in an article published on May 6, examines a different High Court case that affected the amounts allowed with political campaign contributions — and it came 36 years before Citizens United.

The case was Buckley v. Valeo, decided by the Burger Court in 1976.

"For a brief moment in American history," Hakim recalls, "the rich didn't control politics. Back in 1974, in the wake of the Watergate scandal, Congress passed new campaign finance restrictions that would have largely eliminated the ability of wealthy people to buy elections…. David Koch, a wealthy industrialist, was enraged. 'I have the right to spend whatever I choose to promote what I believe,' he later wrote, adding that the law 'makes my blood boil.'"

Hakim adds, "Flash forward to the 2024 presidential campaign. Six of the nation's wealthiest billionaires spent more than $100 million apiece to help get another billionaire, Donald J. Trump, elected president."

According to Hakim, Buckley v. Valeo helped pave the way for Citizens United. The Gerald Ford-era ruling, Hakim notes, "upheld many aspects of the post-Watergate campaign finance law" but "eviscerated other parts of the law, leaving the rich with their own set of rules."

"Later cases, like the better-known Citizens United decision, opened the doors even further," Hakim explains. "But it was Buckley that established the nation's modern, muddled campaign finance system, and Buckley that allowed the Koch brothers to build a right-wing political money machine that rivaled that of the Republican Party itself. The case is as relevant as ever. Since taking office, Mr. Trump has celebrated billionaire donors at a White House dinner and raised unprecedented sums for a lame-duck president."

The "Buckley" in Buckley v. Valeo wasn't the National Review's William F. Buckley, but then-Sen. James L. Buckley (a member of the Conservative Party of New York). And the "Valeo" was Francis R. Valeo (secretary of the U.S. Senate).

University of Chicago law professor Geoffrey Stone argues that Buckley v. Valeo opened a Pandora's box, although the Burger Court justices didn't necessarily realize it at the time.

Stone told the Times, "If those justices had been aware then of what we now face, my guess is that we would have had the opposite result. They weren't imagining the current world."

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