Citizens Divided: Campaign Finance Reform and the Constitution.

POST, Robert C. [Ruth Bader Ginsburg].

$7,500.00

Item Number: 148140

Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2014.

First edition of this critique on campaign finance regulations. Octavo, original publisher’s cloth. Association copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, “To Justice Ginsburg – with deep admiration and appreciation Rob.” American lawyer and jurist, Ruth Bader Ginsburg served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1993 until her death in 2020 and was responsible for some of the most eventful legal decisions of the past half-century. Nominated by President Bill Clinton in 1993 to replace retiring justice Byron White, Ginsburg became the first Jewish woman and the second woman to serve on the Court, after Sandra Day O’Connor. Ginsburg spent much of her legal career as an advocate for gender equality and women’s rights, winning many arguments before the Supreme Court. During her tenure as associate justice of the Supreme Court, Ginsburg received attention for her fiery and passionate dissents that reflected liberal views of the law. She was popularly dubbed “the Notorious R.B.G.”, a moniker she later embraced. She authored several important majority opinions related to gender discrimination, voting rights, and affirmative action in cases such as United States v. Virginia (1996) which struck down the Virginia Military Institute’s  male-only admissions policy as violating the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, Olmstead v. L.C. (1999) in which the Court ruled that mental illness is a form of disability covered under the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, and Friends of the Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Environmental Services, Inc. (2000) in which the Court held that residents have standing to seek fines for an industrial polluter that affected their interests and that is able to continue doing so. Fine in a fine dust jacket. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box by the Harcourt Bindery.

In Citizens Divided: Campaign Finance Reform and the Constitution, Robert C. Post examines the tension between the First Amendment and democratic integrity in the context of campaign finance regulation. Post critiques the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. FEC (2010), arguing that the ruling misinterprets the role of free speech in a democracy. He distinguishes between two conceptions of the First Amendment: one that prioritizes individual expression and another that safeguards the communicative structures necessary for self-governance. By emphasizing the latter, Post advocates for a regulatory framework that ensures political discourse remains open and deliberative rather than dominated by wealthy interests. His work offers a nuanced constitutional theory that seeks to reconcile democratic accountability with expressive freedoms, challenging the Court’s approach to money in politics.