Right idea, but for the right reason?
Thursday, June 19th, 2008 By Mike Maurer
The First Amendment can always breathe a little sigh of relief when campaign finance laws are overruled. Cheers to a Franklin County judge for stepping up.
It’s the second time he’s done it. What’s interesting there is that the first time he did it on the grounds that the procedure of enacting the bill was messy. This time, he chose the “single subject” rule, a concept that a bill should be simple, enacting one thing at a time.
It’d be nicer all around if he could get to the substance and reject the thing on basic, substantive grounds.
And while it’d be nice to have a substantive law of “single subject” legislation, right now it’s closer to a tool that allows judges to overturn things they don’t like and to ignore if it would overturn things they do like.
Tags: campaign finance, courts, first amendment, single subject
