Note

Toward Recognition of a Monetary Threshold in Campaign Finance Disclosure Law

Laws requiring the disclosure of donor identity have been the one area of campaign finance that the Supreme Court has left virtually untouched, an approach that stands in marked contrast to cases in which the government has attempted to compel the identification of authors of election-related handbills. In the latter cases, the Court applies strict scrutiny to protect First Amendment interests, but applies only intermediate scrutiny in the former.

This has led to inconsistent results, protecting the lone pamphleteer but not the donor of modest means. It has also created substantial confusion and line-drawing problems in lower courts. Many scholars and courts have noted the tension between these two doctrines and some have suggested ways to distinguish them, but none have identified the rationales motivating the Court. A critical assessment of these rationales suggests that lesser scrutiny applied to disclosure of donations is warranted only above a certain substantive threshold amount.

The existence of substantive (that is, more than de minimis) thresholds in disclosure laws—amounts below which public disclosure is not required—would reconcile a fundamental tension between the two doctrines. This Note argues that courts have a role to play by reviewing challenges to these thresholds, and proposes that they apply the intermediate scrutiny test already articulated for disclosure requirements in order to do so. While lower courts have so far refused to review thresholds with anything more than rationality review, this is based on a misguided interpretation of Supreme Court precedent. In evaluating future challenges, this Note contends that courts should evaluate the cogency of governments’ justifications for their thresholds, rather than fashioning the numerical thresholds themselves.

Conscience, Speech, and Money

The Establishment Clause is often interpreted as prohibiting taxation to promote religion on the grounds that such taxation infringes on taxpayers’ freedom of conscience. Critics have argued that this idea, called the “Jeffersonian proposition,” is open to two objections. The equality objection says that taxation to promote religion does not violate the freedom of conscience any more than taxation to promote other views to which taxpayers may conscientiously object. But if the Jeffersonian proposition is construed broadly to cover any government speech with which taxpayers disagree, it faces an anarchy objection. No government can function properly without support for government speech. So proponents of the Jeffersonian proposition face a dilemma: either discriminate against those with non-religious conscientious claims or confront the anarchical consequences of a general right of conscientious objection to government speech. Most proponents of the Jeffersonian proposition have grasped the first horn of this dilemma by denying the equality objection. Rejecting that approach, this Article confronts the anarchy objection by developing a balancing account of the freedom of conscience. According to this account, the state may override claims of conscience when it has a legitimate interest in compelling support for speech. When it comes to religious speech, however, the state may not have any countervailing interest to balance against freedom of conscience. Under those circumstances, the Jeffersonian proposition may be vindicated. By showing how this argument is consistent with much of existing compelled support doctrine under the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment, and by defending it against objections that compelled support does not implicate the freedoms of conscience, association, or speech, this Article argues for the Jeffersonian proposition’s continued place in our understanding of the First Amendment.

Confronting Reality: Surrogate Forensic Science Witnesses Under the Confrontation Clause

In 2009, the Supreme Court in Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, interpreted the Confrontation Clause to require forensic analysts to testify in court before a forensic analyst’s report can be admitted into evidence against a criminal defendant. Ever since, law enforcement groups, lower federal courts, state supreme courts, and commentators have been asking the same question: Who can fulfill the role of the testifying analyst? Put more specifically, would allowing a “surrogate witness” like a laboratory supervisor or a single member of a team of forensic analysts satisfy the Confrontation Clause? It is an issue that is currently before the Court, thanks to a petition for a writ of certiorari filed on behalf of Richard Pendergrass, who is seeking review of a decision of the Indiana Supreme Court permitting the use of surrogate witnesses.

This note seeks to answer this question by tracking the ongoing debate between originalist interpretation and policy in the context of the Confrontation Clause. It argues that given the role policy has played in the analogous right to counsel context, the continuing debate over the reliability of forensic science, and the pressure from law enforcement groups who suggest surrogate witnesses are a necessary tool to mitigate the impact of Melendez-Diaz, policy arguments will need to be addressed, and may even prove decisive in the battle over surrogate witnesses. Finally, this paper proposes a compromise approach, where the Court could allow surrogate witnesses who have direct contact with the testing process as part of the laboratory’s standard procedure.

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