Which decision is an example of how the Supreme Court has affected campaign finance?

The Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. FEC is a landmark case that significantly altered campaign finance law in the United States. This ruling established the principle that corporations and unions have a First Amendment right to spend unlimited amounts of money on political campaigns and independent expenditures. The Court reasoned that such spending constitutes a form of protected speech and concluded that government cannot restrict independent political expenditures by corporations or unions.

As a result of this decision, the landscape of campaign finance was transformed, allowing for the emergence of Super PACs, which can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money to advocate for or against political candidates, as long as they do not coordinate directly with the candidates' campaigns. This ruling has sparked extensive debate regarding the influence of money in politics, raising concerns about the potential for corruption and the disproportionate influence of wealth on electoral outcomes.

In contrast, the McCain-Feingold Act was a piece of legislation aimed at regulating campaign contributions but was significantly challenged and altered by the Citizens United decision. Buckley v. Valeo also addressed campaign finance but primarily focused on the limits on individual contributions and the idea of spending as a form of speech, rather than extending the same protections to corporations and unions as Citizens United did. Lochner