Smith to Testify Before Congress

September 19, 2005

Former Federal Election Commission (FEC) chairman and Professor of Law Bradley A. Smith will testify before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on House Administration Thursday, Sept. 22, 2005. The Committee Hearing, which will begin at 9:00 am in room 1310 of the Longworth House Office Building in Washington, D.C., is on “Political Speech on the Internet: Should it be Regulated?” This will be Smith’s first post-FEC appearance commenting on the subject.

Smith is one of the nation’s leading authorities on election law and campaign finance. He returns to Capital University Law School this fall after five years in Washington, D.C., where he served as Commissioner, Vice Chairman, and Chairman of the Federal Election Commission. Prior to his nomination by President Clinton in 2000 to fill a Republican-designated seat, Smith had become a fixture in the national discussion on campaign finance, and was called “the most sought after witness” when Congress considered campaign finance issues.

Professor Smith’s writings have appeared in leading law journals across the country, including the Yale Law Journal, Georgetown Law Journal, and Pennsylvania Law Review, and in popular publications such as the Wall Street Journal, USA Today and National Review. Professor Smith’s book, “Unfree Speech: The Folly of Campaign Finance Reform (Princeton University Press 2001),” received national attention when it was published. Syndicated columnist George Will praised it as “the year’s most important book on governance.” The Times of London called it “a much needed dose of realism which has relevance far beyond America,” and Publishers Weekly described it as “a marvelous contrarian view: moderate in tone, elegant in language, clever in argument.”

A frequent guest lecturer, Professor Smith has spoken at more than 30 of the nation’s law schools, including Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Stanford, Chicago, Michigan and New York University. His many media credits include national appearances on ABC, NBC, PBS, Fox, CNBC, MSNBC, C-Span, and Bloomberg Media, including such programs as Hardball with Chris Matthews and the O’Reilly Factor. He also has appeared on numerous local, national and Canadian radio programs, and made television appearances in Great Britain and Japan. Professor Smith has represented the Inter-American Institute for Human Rights as an election observer overseas, and addressed election officials from developing democracies on behalf of the International Foundation for Electoral Systems and the International Republican Institute.

Prior to joining Capital’s faculty in 1993, Professor Smith served as United States Vice Consul in Ecuador, and practiced law with the Columbus, Ohio, firm of Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease. He is a graduate of Harvard Law School and Kalamazoo College and he teaches Administrative Law, Election Law and Jurisprudence. He also has taught law at George Mason University.