Professor Nathaniel Persily Speaks on Regulating Online Campaigns in Central Valley Lecture

Nathaniel Persily, the James B. McClatchy Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and a nationally recognized scholar of constitutional law, election law, and the democratic process, delivered the Central Valley Foundation/James B. McClatchy Lecture on the First Amendment in the Kalmanovitz Appellate Courtroom on October 29.

Speaking to a large audience that included Central Valley Foundation co-founder Susan McClatchy, Persily spoke on the need to rethink campaign finance regulation in light of new technologies that are overtaking television as the primary medium of political expression. Following brief introductory remarks by Dean Kevin R. Johnson and Steve Boutin '72, a shareholder at Boutin Jones and member of the Central Valley Foundation board, Persily talked about the changing nature of political campaigning and the challenges faced by regulators.

"Whether you're looking at the jurisprudence or the regulatory framework, a lot of what we think of as campaign finance law assumes the 30-second television ad as being the principle means of political manipulation and persuasion on behalf of parties, groups, and candidates," said Persily. "But that's going to change, because in the next decade or so, television as we know it is going to decline in importance as the principle mode of political communication due to the rise of the internet and on-demand platforms."

As voters increasingly get information from targeted advertisements, on-demand video, blogs, and other online sources, Persily said, these internet-based campaign tools have the potential to exacerbate problems such as anonymous campaign spending. The need for regulation has become "a flash point" for a divided U.S. Federal Election Commission, which is ill-equipped to deal with a campaign information system that is globally based, often anonymously sourced, blurs the distinction between campaigners and media, and utilizes a wide array of delivery platforms, he continued. Regulation, if it is going to occur, probably will have to come from internet portals such as Google and Facebook, which are in a better position to impose standards regarding transparency, misrepresentation, fairness, and other goals of campaign finance reformers, Persily said.

The Central Valley Foundation and UC Davis School of Law established the Central Valley Foundation/James B. McClatchy Lecture to promote discussion and understanding of First Amendment issues.  Professor Persily's lecture was the sixth in the series that has included Pamela S. Karlan, Professor of Law and Co-director of the Supreme Court Litigation Clinic at Stanford Law School; Chief Judge Alex Kozinski of the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit; Akhil Amar, Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale University; Geoffrey R. Stone, the Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago Law School; and Jack M. Balkin, the Knight Professor of Constitutional Law and the First Amendment at Yale Law School.