Campaign Lawyering
The Practice
May/June 2024
What does it mean to lawyer on behalf of a campaign?
May/June 2024
Introducing the May 2024 Issue
What is campaign lawyering and why are we writing about it.
$peech
The U.S. Constitution does not mention campaign finance. How, then, did we arrive at an understanding of the First Amendment that makes most campaign finance regulation vulnerable to constitutional challenge? Drawing from anonymous interviews with 52 lawyers, as well as public records and archival materials, this story argues that nonjudicial actors—lawyers, advocacy organizations, patrons, and their networks—played an important role.
Teaching Presidential Campaign Lawyering
Over the course of two weeks in January 2024, approximately 40 Harvard Law School students sat together, Monday through Friday, for three hours a day, to discuss what it’s like to be a lawyer for a presidential campaign.
Counsels for Change
Exploring the careers of lawyers at the Environmental Defense Fund, the Human Rights Campaign and Human Rights Campaign Foundation, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, we showcase how such individuals traverse the legal, regulatory, and ethical landscape for general counsel in mission-driven contexts.
Upholding Ethics and Excellence in the Profession
Sherrilyn Ifill served as the seventh president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF) from 2013 to 2022, and currently serves as president and director-counsel emeritus. She speaks to David B. Wilkins, CLP faculty director, about professional identity and campaign lawyering.
