I certainly agree with Tim's general sentiments, but current accepted
doctrine simply does not follow this concept. The Federalist Papers (among
many other sources) said that the main institutional constraint that
prevented rulers from self-dealing was the rule of law because any statute
passed
I am curious about Howard's proposed distinction. Candidate
elections are about the public policy that will prevail in the
community, too. And the dangers of elected officials using
public funds to entrench their position could easily be matched by
non-elected officials doing the same thing.
By
John Nagle asks: "[I]f the tobacco assessment is permissible, could the government also
tax movie studios to fund an educational campaign against violent
entertainment?"
Perhaps not,but only because that would be a
tax on speech itself -- i.e., on the practice of making movies
-- and
Just to clarify the point of my earlier
post: My concern is not with the source of the funds, but rather with the
government using public funds to engage in campaigning, so as to influence
voters.
Mark S. Scarberry
Pepperdine University School of Law
-Original Message-
Bobby Lipkin has raised the question of precedence among underlying
constitutional values and proposed self-rule as the most fundamental
constitutional idea in our system, both as it is and as it ought to be.
I responded by proposing liberty as a more fundamental (and substantively
more
