400
Breyer, J., concurring
rately to address the critical question of how the Court ought to review this kind of problem, and to explain why I believe the Court's choice here is correct.
If the dissent believes that the Court diminishes the importance of the First Amendment interests before us, it is wrong. The Court's opinion does not question the constitutional importance of political speech or that its protection lies at the heart of the First Amendment. Nor does it question the need for particularly careful, precise, and independent judicial review where, as here, that protection is at issue. But this is a case where constitutionally protected interests lie on both sides of the legal equation. For that reason there is no place for a strong presumption against constitutionality, of the sort often thought to accompany the words "strict scrutiny." Nor can we expect that mechanical application of the tests associated with "strict scrutiny"—the tests of "compelling interests" and "least restrictive means"—will properly resolve the difficult constitutional problem that campaign finance statutes pose. Cf. Kovacs v. Cooper, 336 U. S. 77, 96 (1949) (Frankfurter, J., concurring) (objecting, in the First Amendment context, to "oversimplified formulas"); see also Eu v. San Francisco County Democratic Central Comm., 489 U. S. 214, 233-234 (1989) (Stevens, J., concurring); Illinois Bd. of Elections v. Socialist Workers Party, 440 U. S. 173, 188-189 (1979) (Blackmun, J., concurring) (same).
On the one hand, a decision to contribute money to a campaign is a matter of First Amendment concern—not because money is speech (it is not); but because it enables speech. Through contributions the contributor associates himself with the candidate's cause, helps the candidate communicate a political message with which the contributor agrees, and helps the candidate win by attracting the votes of similarly minded voters. Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U. S. 1, 24-25 (1976) (per curiam). Both political association and political communication are at stake.
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