Did the congressional drafters of the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law build within it the seeds for its own destruction?
Tucked within the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (the formal name for “McCain-Feingold”) is a provision requiring that certain constitutional challenges to the law be heard by a three-judge court, with direct appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. This special jurisdictional provision makes it much more likely that within the next few years the Supreme Court will strike limits on the amounts people and entities can contribute to the political parties in so-called party soft money.
