Newberry v. United States | |
---|---|
![]() | |
Argued January 7,10, 1921 Decided May 2, 1921 | |
Full case name | Newberry, et al. v. United States |
Citations | 256 U.S. 232 ( more ) 41 S. Ct. 469; 65 L. Ed. 913; 1921 U.S. LEXIS 1632 |
Case history | |
Prior | Error to the District Count of the U.S. for the Western District of Michigan |
Holding | |
Authority to control party primaries or conventions for designating candidates not bestowed on Congress by U.S. Constitution. | |
Court membership | |
| |
Case opinions | |
Majority | McReynolds, joined by Holmes, Day, Van Devanter; McKenna (in part) |
Concurrence | McKenna (in part) |
Concur/dissent | White |
Concur/dissent | Pitney, joined by Brandeis, Clarke |
Laws applied | |
Federal Corrupt Practices Act; 1913 Mich. Pub. Acts 109, Sec. 1; U.S. Const. Art. I, Sec. 4; U.S. Const., 17th Amend. | |
Superseded by | |
United States v. Classic (1941) |
Newberry v. United States, 256 U.S. 232 (1921), is a decision by the United States Supreme Court which held that the United States Constitution did not grant the United States Congress the authority to regulate political party primaries or nomination processes. [1] The court struck down 1911 amendments to the Federal Corrupt Practices Act which placed spending limits on candidate and political election committee spending in primaries or other nomination processes for federal office.
With a shift in public opinion for pro-campaign finance reform legislation during the Progressive era, Congress enacted the Tillman Act in 1907, which banned direct corporate financing of political campaigns. [2] This was followed with the enactment of the Federal Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) of 1910, which was amended in 1911; providing two limitations on expenditures in federal elections. [3] The first was that no candidate for Congress shall, in procuring his nomination and election, spend any sum in excess of the amount provided for by state law. The second was that no candidate for the United States House of Representatives shall spend more than $5,000 in any campaign for nomination and election, and that no candidate for United States Senate shall spend more than $10,000 in any campaign for his nomination and election. [4]
Michigan law (Act No. 109, § 1, 1913) prohibited candidates for federal office from expending more than 25 percent of his anticipated federal salary for the purposes of securing his nomination, and another 25 percent of his anticipated federal salary on the general election. At the time, this amounted to about $3,750 in each phase of the electoral process.
Truman Handy Newberry was a Michigan businessman and former Secretary of the Navy who decided to run for the U.S. Senate as a Republican in 1918. His primary opponent was Henry Ford, the legendary automobile manufacturer. The primary was hotly contested, and Newberry was alleged to have spent upwards of $100,000 on his nomination race. Newberry defeated Ford, and went on to win the general election. Ford challenged Newberry and used his federal connections to win an investigation by Congress and the United States Department of Justice. Newberry was tried in 1921 and convicted.
Newberry appealed his conviction to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that the FCPA was unconstitutional.
Writing for the majority, Justice James Clark McReynolds held that the U.S. Constitution did not grant Congress the power to regulate primary elections or political party nomination processes. The power of Congress over federal elections, McReynolds said, has its source solely in Article I, Section 4, of the Constitution. The Seventeenth Amendment, promulgated in May 1913, neither instituted nor required a new meaning of the term "election" and so did not modify Article I, Section 4. Primaries, McReynolds argued, are definitely not elections for office.
Neither a plain reading of the Constitution nor the meaning ascribed to them by the framers of the Constitution permits any other conclusion, he said. Moreover, Congress does not need to regulate primaries and nomination procedures in order to effectively perform its duties under Article I, Section 4. To infer such a power, McReynolds found, would infringe on the rights of the states and the people.
Justice Joseph McKenna concurred in part. He agreed with the majority that the FCPA was unconstitutional prior to adoption of the Seventeenth Amdendment. However, he reserved judgment as to whether the Act was constitutional after adoption of the amendment.
Justice Mahlon Pitney concurred in part. He was joined in part by Justices Louis D. Brandeis and John Hessin Clarke. Pitney argued that there was no constitutional infirmity in congressional regulation of primary elections. However, he concluded that the district court's instructions to the jury were in error. He would have reversed, with directions for a new trial.
Chief Justice White, dissenting but concurring with a modification in the judgment of reversal, found no constitutional infirmity. He called the idea that "the nominating primary is one thing and the election another and different thing... a suicidal one." He also argued that the record of the passage of the Seventeenth Amendment by Congress indicated that Congress intended for the amendment to permit the regulation of primaries and political party nominations. White, too, found an error in the district court's jury instruction, and would have reversed and remanded on that basis.
In an investigation after the court's ruling, the U.S. Senate found that Newberry had not violated the FCPA. The Senate seated him but expressed disapproval of the sum spent in his primary campaign. In the face of a new movement to unseat him, Newberry resigned from the Senate on November 18, 1922.
The Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution established the direct election of United States senators in each state. The amendment supersedes Article I, Section 3, Clauses 1 and 2 of the Constitution, under which senators were elected by state legislatures. It also alters the procedure for filling vacancies in the Senate, allowing for state legislatures to permit their governors to make temporary appointments until a special election can be held.
Campaign finance laws in the United States have been a contentious political issue since the early days of the union. The most recent major federal law affecting campaign finance was the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) of 2002, also known as "McCain-Feingold". Key provisions of the law prohibited unregulated contributions to national political parties and limited the use of corporate and union money to fund ads discussing political issues within 60 days of a general election or 30 days of a primary election; However, provisions of BCRA limiting corporate and union expenditures for issue advertising were overturned by the Supreme Court in Federal Election Commission v. Wisconsin Right to Life.
Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1 (1976), was a landmark decision of the US Supreme Court on campaign finance. A majority of justices held that, as provided by section 608 of the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, limits on election expenditures are unconstitutional. In a per curiam opinion, they ruled that expenditure limits contravene the First Amendment provision on freedom of speech because a restriction on spending for political communication necessarily reduces the quantity of expression. It limited disclosure provisions and limited the Federal Election Commission's power. Justice Byron White dissented in part and wrote that Congress had legitimately recognized unlimited election spending "as a mortal danger against which effective preventive and curative steps must be taken".
McConnell v. Federal Election Commission, 540 U.S. 93 (2003), is a case in which the United States Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of most of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA), often referred to as the McCain–Feingold Act.
Mahlon R. Pitney IV was an American lawyer, jurist, and politician who served in the U.S. House of Representatives for two terms from 1895 to 1899. He later served as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1912 to 1922.
U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, 514 U.S. 779 (1995), is a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the Court ruled that states cannot impose qualifications for prospective members of the U.S. Congress stricter than those the Constitution specifies. The decision invalidated 23 states' Congressional term limit provisions. The parties to the case were U.S. Term Limits, a nonprofit advocacy group, and Arkansas politician Ray Thornton, among others.
The Federal Corrupt Practices Act, also known as the Publicity Act, was a federal law of the United States that was enacted in 1910 and amended in 1911 and 1925. It remained the nation's primary law regulating campaign finance in federal elections until the passage of the Federal Election Campaign Act in 1971. The Act was signed by President William Howard Taft on June 25, 1910.
United States v. Classic, 313 U.S. 299 (1941), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States that the United States Constitution empowered Congress to regulate primary elections and political party nominations procedures, and that the constitutional "right of participation" extended to primary elections "is protected just as is the right to vote at the election, where the primary is by law made an integral part of the election machinery, whether the voter exercises his right in a party primary which invariably, sometimes or never determines the ultimate choice of the representative."
Davis v. Federal Election Commission, 554 U.S. 724 (2008), is a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States which held that section 319 of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 unconstitutionally infringed on candidates' rights as provided by First Amendment.
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310 (2010), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States regarding campaign finance laws and free speech under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The court held 5–4 that the freedom of speech clause of the First Amendment prohibits the government from restricting independent expenditures for political campaigns by corporations, including nonprofit corporations, labor unions, and other associations.
N.Y. State Bd. of Elections v. Lopez Torres, 552 U.S. 196 (2008), was a case decided by the United States Supreme Court that involved a constitutional challenge brought against New York State's judicial election law, alleging that it unfairly prevented candidates from obtaining access to the ballot. The Supreme Court rejected this challenge and held that the state's election laws did not infringe upon candidates' First Amendment associational rights. Several concurring justices emphasized, however, that their decision reflected only the constitutionality of the state's election system, and not its wisdom or merit.
The White Court refers to the Supreme Court of the United States from 1910 to 1921, when Edward Douglass White served as Chief Justice of the United States. White, an associate justice since 1894, succeeded Melville Fuller as Chief Justice after the latter's death, and White served as Chief Justice until his death a decade later. He was the first sitting associate justice to be elevated to chief justice in the Court's history. He was succeeded by former president William Howard Taft.
A campaign finance reform amendment refers to any proposed amendment to the United States Constitution to authorize greater restrictions on spending related to political speech, and to overturn Supreme Court rulings which have narrowed such laws under the First Amendment. Several amendments have been filed since Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and the Occupy movement.
Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee v. FEC, 518 U.S. 604 (1996), was a case heard by the Supreme Court of the United States in which the Colorado Republican Party challenged the Federal Election Commission (FEC) as to whether the "Party Expenditure Provision" of the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 (FECA) violated the First Amendment right to free speech. This provision put a limit on the amount of money a national party could spend on a congressional candidate's campaign. The FEC argued that the Committee violated this provision when purchasing a radio advertisement that attacked the likely candidate of the Colorado Democratic Party. The court held that since the expenditures by the committee were made independently from a specific candidate, they did not violate the campaign contribution limitations established by the FECA, and were protected under the First Amendment.
FEC v. National Conservative PAC, 470 U.S. 480 (1985), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States striking down expenditure prohibitions of the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 (FECA), which regulates the fundraising and spending in political campaigns. The FECA is the primary law that places regulations on campaign financing by limiting the amount that may be contributed. The Act established that no independent political action committee may contribute more than $1,000 to any given presidential candidate in support of a campaign.
The 1918 United States Senate election in Michigan took place on November 5, 1918. Incumbent Republican Senator William Alden Smith did not seek re-election to a third term in office. In the race to succeed him, Republican former Secretary of the Navy Truman Handy Newberry defeated the automobile industrialist Henry Ford. Ford first challenged Newberry in the Republican primary and lost and then faced Newberry again, running as the Democratic nominee in the general election.
James Chiun-Yue Ho is a Taiwanese-born American attorney and jurist. He was nominated to serve as a U.S. circuit judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit by President Donald Trump, and took office in 2018. Ho formerly served as Solicitor General of Texas from 2008 to 2010.
Shadow campaigns refers to spending meant to influence political outcomes where the source of the money is not publicly disclosed or is difficult to trace. United States campaign finance law has been regulated by the Federal Election Commission since its creation in the wake of the Watergate Scandal in 1975, and in the years following Citizens United v. FEC, there has been a rise in outside special interest groups spending money on political campaigns in the United States. Dark money leaves voters uninformed about important political information and it can obscure potential conflicts of interest for judges and legislators alike.
Federal Election Commission v. Ted Cruz for Senate, 596 U.S. ___ (2022), was a case related to the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Supreme Court of the United States struck down section 304 of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, which limited the amount of money that candidates could be paid on personal loans to their campaign.