Middlebury Graduate Sends His Opinion of Campaign Finance All the Way to the Supreme Court

Author: Julie Shumway

Middlebury alumnus and U.S. District Court Judge William K. Sessions III spoke at the College on Monday evening to a mixed audience of faculty, students, town residents and local political candidates. Sessions joined a lecture/question-and-answer session sponsored by the Political Science Department regarding his recent ruling on campaign finance laws in Vermont.
Professor of Political Science David Rosenberg opened the talk with a short biography outlining Sessions' time as a Middlebury student (he graduated in 1969), public defender for the state of Vermont and current role as federal court judge. In his opening, Rosenberg admonished against any referrals to Sessions' recent, and highly controversial, ruling on the unconstitutionality of the Federal Death Penalty Act of 1994 (see article, "Death of the Death Penalty," page 8).
Sessions spoke on the multi-faceted nature of campaign finance reform, and his role as an interpreter of law within the bounds of the Constitution and previous Supreme Court precedent. As he described it in his speech, Sessions looked at the Vermont case Landell v. Brunelle to review Vermont's Act 64, a campaign finance reform law, using precedents set by the Supreme Court case Buckley v. Valeo. Buckley v. Valeo was a 1976 case in which issues of campaign finance reform came under scrutiny for violation of freedoms protected under the First Amendment. Of particular concern were the freedoms of association (or assembly) and speech. Sessions ruled that, while limiting contributions made to candidates by private individuals or political action committees is acceptable within the guidelines set by Buckley v. Valeo, limiting the contributions made by political parties to particular candidates defies the First Amendment right to freedom of association. As Sessions described the history of his decision, the theory behind this ruling lay in the belief that to set unrealistic limits on campaign contributions by political parties would constrict the effect of these parties to such a degree as to "destroy political parties as we know them." This, Sessions determined, would violate those same organizations' rights to existence as protected by the First Amendment.
Sessions also ruled that limiting campaign expenditures by candidates did not fall under the authority of the law as it applied in both Buckley v. Valeo and Vermont's own, more recent case, Landell v Brunelle.
After Sessions' speech, a series of charged questions and comments was made by the audience. These included suggestions for ways to make campaign finance reform economically viable while keeping it constitutionally sound. Professors Eric Davis and Murray Dry of the Political Science Department offered commentary on the question and answer session.
After the lecture and discussion, Professor Rosenberg noted that Sessions had performed what he referred to as "Judicial Jujitsu", by carefully ruling on the constitutionality of Landell v Brunelle in ways which, while viewed by many as correct interpretations of the Constitution, were certain to push the case into the Court of Appeals, and ultimately on to the Supreme Court of the United States. Sessions himself stated that were this case to end up in the Supreme Court, he would feel immensely proud.
Sessions expressed his view on this case's national relevance, saying if the case reaches the Supreme Court, "It would be the vehicle by which campaign finance reform would be discussed [nationally]."