Eliza Newlin Carney at the National Journal gets opinions from around the campaign finance reform community about what effect the recent Supreme Court rulings on political advertising and the Millionaire's Amendment will have on other types of campaign finance laws. While the general view is that it will have negative consequences for many types of regulatory laws, the news is not all bad for public financing programs.

The concern centers primarily over the Supreme Court's ruling that allowing candidates who face wealthy, self-financed challengers to raise donations in excess of federal contribution limits puts an undue burden on the self-financing candidate. The fear is that this could lead to challenges to the matching funds provision in Clean Elections public financing laws. But what it may actually mean is that public financing becomes the policy with the best chance of moving forward:

Ryan, in fact, argues that the Davis ruling's implications have been exaggerated. "I don't think it has very direct application to the existing public financing laws," he said.

But others are not so sanguine. The Supreme Court under Roberts "is going firmly in the direction of deregulation," said Loyola Law School professorRichard L. Hasen. Under this court, Hasen argues, restrictions that are now central to the campaign finance system -- the contribution limits and the ban on direct corporate and union election spending -- could be vulnerable to challenge.

Down the road, Hasen warned, "we could well be looking at a situation where the only campaign finance laws that are constitutional are disclosure laws and voluntary public financing systems."