In the context of ongoing deliberations over a proposed amendment to the Constitution to authorize the government to enact laws regulating campaign expenditures and contributions, a sharp, even bitter, rift has emerged between different generations of the ACLU's leadership over the ACLU's understanding of the First Amendment. The rift is not about whether to adopt the proposed constitutional amendment (neither side of the intra-ACLU debate has endorsed it), but about the ACLU's position on the constitutionality of campaign finance reform today.

The current leadership of the ACLU takes a strong pro-free speech position that, like the position of Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Chief Justice John Roberts, looks askance at most forms of campaign finance regulation that would limit the freedom of individuals to spend as much as they want in the political process to advance their political beliefs.

The six individuals who led the ACLU from 1962 to 1993 endorse a rather different view. In a letter sent on September 4 to the leadership of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, they embraced a position that, like the position of Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan, recognizes that limitations on campaign expenditures and contributions may be necessary to ensure the proper functioning of the democratic process.

As a card-carrying member of the ACLU for 40 years and a member of the ACLU's National Advisory Council, I enthusiastically endorse the position of the collective former leadership of the organization. The sad truth is that the current leaders of the ACLU have embraced a thoughtless and reflexive conception of the First Amendment that is incompatible with the overarching values of the Constitution and, indeed, of the ACLU itself.

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