Bradley Smith (law professor)
American political scientist
Bradley Alan Smith (born 1958) is the Josiah H. Blackmore II/Shirley M. Nault Professor at Capital University Law School in Columbus, Ohio. He served as commissioner, vice chairman, and chairman of the Federal Election Commission (FEC) between 2000 and 2005. He has held prior visiting appointments at Princeton University and West Virginia University. Smith is best known for his writing and activities on campaign finance deregulation. He founded the Center for Competitive Politics, now known as the Institute for Free Speech, to promote deregulation of campaign finance.
Early life and education
Career
Academia
Smith received a B.A. from Kalamazoo College and a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1990. After practicing law with the Columbus, Ohio-based law firm of Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease, Smith joined the faculty at Capital University Law School in Columbus in 1993.
In 1996, Smith published "Faulty Assumptions and Undemocratic Consequences of Campaign Finance Reform" in the Yale Law Journal. In "Faulty Assumptions", Smith set forth a case against campaign finance regulation, arguing that efforts to regulate money in politics had been based on a series of incorrect beliefs about the effects of money in politics and that as a result reform efforts had failed to accomplish their objectives and had made many of the problems of money in politics worse. "Faulty Assumptions," and later articles by Smith, have been cited in numerous recent Supreme Court decisions striking down campaign finance laws on Constitutional grounds, including Citizens United v.
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