Big Money Unleashed: The Campaign to Deregulate Election Spending
University of Chicago Press, January 2024

Americans across party lines believe that public policy is rigged in favor of those who wield big money in elections. Yet, legislators are restricted in addressing these concerns by a series of Supreme Court decisions finding that campaign finance regulations violate the First Amendment. Ann Southworth’s Big Money Unleashed argues that our current impasse is the result of a long-term process involving many players, including the attorneys who hatched the theories necessary to support the legal doctrine, the legal advocacy groups that advanced those arguments, and the wealthy patrons who financed these efforts.

Praise: “[Big Money] is a testament to Southworth’s careful scholarship and status as a scholar both sides respect that she was able to gain access to lawyers on this deeply polarizing political issue. The result is a rich and penetrating account of how lawyers on the right mobilize law for social change in contemporary America, using a playbook honed by left-wing organizations during the Civil Rights Era to weaken progressive causes and political power.” —Scott L. Cummings, Jotwell