Campaign Contributions, Bribery, and the First Amendment

Peter Henning has a fascinating post entitled Prosecuting Campaign Contributions as Bribes.  The post was interesting to me because the federal bribery statute is a hobby horse of mine; and the difference between bribe and campaign contribution is knotty enough to keep me interested.

I've even been working on a paper where I make this claim: The federal bribery statute is unconstitutional under the First Amendment because it's unconstitutionally overbroadbreath, namely, it criminalizes garden-variety campaign contributions. 

You can read the draft here.  This is a very rough draft (it's almost more of an outline than a draft article) that I haven't been able to get to for a bit.  Fortunately (or not!), I'm busy enough making money that I don't have much time to non-blog-related scholarship.  Anyhow, if you have any substantive comments (saying, point-x is weak is not helpful, since, like I said, it's a draft, so there are a lot of weak points), I'd love to hear them.

Download federal_bribery_statute_campaign_contributions_and_the_first_amendment.pdf