Citizens United and the Judicial Review of Campaign Finance

What makes this paper effective

• The paper grounds its argument in a specific, well-chosen primary source — Edsall's New York Times analysis — and extracts targeted quotations that directly support each analytical point.
• It moves logically from the broad constitutional controversy to concrete electoral evidence (the 2012 Republican primary), giving abstract legal arguments real-world weight.
• The paper engages historical context effectively, invoking FDR's conflict with the conservative Court and Justice Marshall's 1990 dissent to show that Citizens United disrupted decades of established legal thinking.

Key academic technique demonstrated

The paper demonstrates effective use of source integration: rather than merely summarizing Edsall, the student uses his evidence as a springboard for independent analysis, distinguishing between what the Court intended and what actually occurred in practice. This technique — comparing legal theory with empirical political outcomes — is a strong model for policy-oriented legal analysis.

Structure breakdown

The paper opens with an introduction to Citizens United and its core controversy, then pivots to historical context around judicial activism. It narrows to a concrete case study of Super PAC spending in the 2012 Republican primary before broadening back out to assess the decision's long-term democratic implications and its reversal of prior precedent. The conclusion synthesizes these threads into a normative judgment about concentrated political power.