“Nationally prominent.” Lawyers Weekly USA 1/22/2001
“The most prominent lawyer in the country in campaign finance and election law.” ABA Journal, November 2006
“One of the most powerful and influential leaders of corporate America’s efforts to dismantle the post-Watergate campaign finance system.” Common Cause, October 15, 2010
Named in 2013 one of the 100 Most Influential Lawyers in America by the National Law Journal. “He is a litigation machine, methodically mowing down restrictions on campaign financing and speech.” His strengths: “legal results,” renowned for his or her ability to get results for clients, and for “thought leadership,” known for cutting-edge commentary about legal issues.” National Law Journal, April 8, 2013
“A tenacious litigator” Common Cause, October 15, 2010
“A very creative, energetic man.” NPR, July 3, 2007
“Absolutely tenacious, a bulldog litigator.” New York Times, January 25, 2010
“Like the Greeks mounting assault after assault on Troy, James Bopp ceaselessly assails federal campaign finance law in an attempt to destroy it.” HuffingtonPost, June 11, 2008
“The pre-eminent election law attorney for conservative groups. He has scored a string of victories challenging restrictions on political activity on First Amendment grounds.” ROLL CALL January 15, 2001
“From his perch outside the capitol beltway, the Indiana lawyer James Bopp Jr. – who brought the lawsuit in the Citizens United case – has proven remarkably aggressive and successful, to the surprise of even some of his conservative colleagues, in posing a series of legal challenges to campaign laws.” New York Times, October 15, 2010
“Even veteran Democratic strategists and campaign lawyers who favor tighter restrictions on political money grudgingly acknowledge the deftness, and increasing success, of their conservative rivals. “They’re smart, they’re aggressive and they’re well-funded. And the results are very troubling.’” New York Times, October 15, 2010
“Jim has always been in the position of making arguments that other people thought were wild-eyed, went too far,” Trevor Potter told me, a little ruefully. “And he’s proved them wrong.” The Atlantic, October 2012
“His passion and his talent for creative maneuverings keep bringing the highest-profile matters to his door.” ABA Journal, November 2006
“One thing no one can dispute is Bopp’s impressive record in the courts.” Indiana University Alumni Magazine, Fall 2012
“I don’t think anybody has a better track record at identifying test cases and investing in them than Jim Bopp.” Bloomberg Businessweek, October 3, 2011
And the First Amendment
“Bopp is using the First Amendment to create a sort of Wild West system where anyone can spend whatever they please, however they choose.” Mother Jones, May/June 2011
And Campaign Finance Litigation
“He is the Energizer Bunny of campaign law reform.” ABA Journal, November 2006
“Indiana lawyer James Bopp is on a mission to unravel the nation’s campaign laws.” Bloomberg Businessweek, October 3, 2011
“The nation’s leading litigator against campaign restrictions.” Washington Post, September 14, 1999
“The pre-eminent courtroom advocate in recent years arguing that limiting campaign donations violate the First Amendment by suppressing political speech.” New York Times, March 29, 2001
“Yet much of the success seen by the counter-reformers has come from one man’s quest to end campaign finance regulation through litigation.” HuffingtonPost, September 27, 2011
“The man most responsible for the way campaigns and elections are financed in America.” National Journal Daily, June 2, 2011
“He developed the legal strategy that has systematically undermined campaign finance reform legislation.” National Journal Daily, June 2, 2011
“James Bopp is the point man for conservative wealthy interests whose goal is to dismantle the laws and regulations we have in place to stop the buying of Congress and other elected officials.” McClatchy Newspapers, October 24, 2010
“Jim Bopp, its intellectual architect, believes this is a good thing – more money, the better (in campaigns), he says. Reformers (and most voters) disagree. Their battle is over the most-basis ideas of our democracy: at stake – according to both sides – is either the revitalization of politics, or its final capture by the powerful. . . . What Jim Bopp Jr. believes is turning out to matter a whole lot more.” The Atlantic, October 2012
“History’s pendulum is now swinging back toward the days when political finances were only lightly regulated, when the system was more open to the cacophonous participation that Jim Bopp loves.” The Atlantic, October 2012
“”There is joy in Boppworld. And the prospect of an end to all contribution limits is even more cause for hope. . . . Fewer, bigger donations would allow politicians to spend more time with voters. And voters are the ones who would ultimately control politicians’ destinies, punishing the corrupt and rewarding the virtuous. I don’t doubt that Bopp believes this. His is an optimistic vision, fundamentally, about Americans and their politics. I hope, if we keep on our present course, that he turns out to be right.” The Atlantic, October 2012
“How an IU graduate helped open the floodgates to corporate and union campaign spending.” Indiana University Alumni Magazine, Fall 2012
“It is quite possible that, largely because of Bopp’s success, there will never again be campaign-finance legislation as comprehensive as McCain-Feingold.” Mother Jones, May/June 2011
“We should now call the statute ‘the Federal Election Campaign Act paid for and authorized by Jim Bopp.’ He keeps coming back and back and back.” Bloomberg Businessweek, October 3, 2011
“We had a 10-year plan to take all this down. If we do it right, I think we can pretty well dismantle the entire regulatory regime that is called campaign finance law. . . . We have been awfully successful and we are not done yet.” New York Times, January 25, 2010
“So Super PACs, like 527 groups and late electioneering communications, are here to stay, and Democrats are adapting to the new reality. What comes next will add another layer to the legacy of a single lawyer in Terre Haute.” National Journal Daily, June 2, 2001
“It’s safe to say that groups on the left and right have Bopp to thank for their new-found freedoms.” Bloomberg, September 21, 2011
And Citizens United v. FEC
“credited as being the intellectual architect of the arguments that persuaded the Supreme Court in Citizens United.” New York Times, May 12, 2013
“The Citizens United case ‘was really Jim’s brainchild. He has manufactured these cases to present certain questions to the Supreme Court in a certain order and achieve a certain result. He is a litigation machine.” New York Times, January 25, 2010
“In January 2008, James Bopp, BA ‘70, got laughed out of court – literally. The white-haired lawyer from Terre Haute, Ind., was appearing before a federal three-judge panel in Washington, D.C., to argue that his client, a small conservative nonprofit named Citizens United, should be able to air Hillary: The Movie on on-demand TV during the Democratic presidential primaries. . . . In court, Bopp argued that the movie wasn’t so different from what you’d see on 60 Minutes, and its creators deserved First Amendment protections. At that point, U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lambert laughed out loud. “You can’t compare this to 60 Minutes,” he said. “Did you read this transcript?” No one was laughing two years later, when the Supreme Court reversed Lambert’s ruling and adopted many of Bopp’s arguments – a decision that wiped out 100 years of precedent in campaign-finance law.” Indiana University Alumni Magazine, Fall 2012
“It took Jim Bopp and his allies eight years and three trips to the Supreme Court to knock down McCain-Feingold’s obstacles to corporate and union money. But Bopp finally got what he wanted: in Citizens United, in 2010, the Court not only invalidated the McCain-Feingold restrictions, it tore out precedent by declaring that Austin had been wrongly decided. McCain-Feingold may have made history, but Citizens United went back and rewrote it.” The Atlantic, October 2012
“Citizens United was the culmination of years of work by Bopp to chip away at the nation’s campaign-finance regulations, often via obscure cases no one expected him to win. But Bopp’s not done – not by a long stretch. Today, the 64-year-old lawyer is pursuing challenges to dismantle practically every facet of campaign-finance regulation. Taken individually, many of those cases look just as preposterous and doomed as Citizens United did in 2008. But laugh at your peril.” Mother Jones, May/June 2011
And Wisconsin Right to Life v. FEC
“In the summer of 2007, Bopp delivered his Trojan horse: a clever attack on the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA also known as McCain-Feingold) to the Supreme Court by a group called Wisconsin Right to Life. The decision under the new conservative Court gutted BCRA’s restrictions on corporate spending on campaign ads aired directly before federal elections.” HuffingtonPost, June 11, 2008
And SuperPACs
“His cases laid the groundwork for creation of so-called “Super PACs,” political committees that take unlimited donations and operate independently of candidates and which were fueled last year by new labor and corporate cash.” Bloomberg, September 21, 2011
“The super PAC would be the overpowering new weapon for Jim Bopp’s revolution.” The Atlantic, October 2012
And Section 527 organizations
“Bopp was the lawyer who crafted the RMIC to fall under the controversial 527 section of the tax code.” IDS Insights, October 2000
“He is the legal craftsman behind organizations that are fueling the anti-campaign finance reform debate.” IDS Insights, October 2000
“Regardless of the outcome of the attempts at campaign finance reform, thus far, Section 527 has produced a legal loophole for funneling large and unaccountable amounts of cash through major organizations of the political right wing.” IDS Insights, October 2000
And Judicial Canons of Ethics
“The victorious attorney in Republican Party of Minnesota v. White (2002).” National Law Journal, June 11, 2008.
“Exploding the Canons of Judicial Campaign Ethics” ABA Journal, November 2006
“On a tear to make judicial campaign speech more wide open and more like that for the other branches of government.” ABA Journal, November 2006
“Bopp said he believes that all judicial candidates, whether appointed or elected, have a right to talk about controversial issues and cases as long as they can’t promise to rule a certain way on a specific case.” Mother Jones, May/June 2006
“The net effect of these changes is that voters will be able to find out more about the views of judicial candidates than they ever have before. That’s an important – and positive – evolution, says James Bopp Jr., a First Amendment lawyer who successfully argued against restrictive canons in the 2002 Supreme Court case.” Governing, March 2006
And Bush v. Gore
“Bopp came up with the cause of action the George W. Bush’s lawyers ultimately used to sway the U.S. Supreme Court and give the presidency to Bush in 2000.” ABA Journal, November 2006
“He developed the legal rationale, by which the Supreme Court decided Bush v. Gore.” The Atlantic, October 2012
And the Republican Party
“Bopp is a Republican stalwart (he sees the Democratic Party as socialist), and he has done yeoman’s work for the party – among other accomplishments, he developed the legal rationale by which the Supreme Court decided Bush v. Gore.” The Atlantic, October 2012
Named 2009 Republican Lawyer of the Year by the Republican National Lawyers Association because of his “outstanding professional accomplishments in support of the party’s beliefs. Jim has worked tirelessly to advance the core beliefs of the Republican Party and has done so with a level of commitment and dedication that is unmatched.” Indianapolis Star, September 13, 2009
“But His roots are outside the GOP establishment.” The Atlantic, October 2012
And Abortion
“Perhaps the most prolific anti-abortion litigator of his generation, responsible for encouraging states to pass laws chipping away at Roe v. Wade and then defending them in court.” New York Times, May 12, 2013
“And with the same fervor and legal acumen he once used to energize the anti-abortion cause, he has compiled an impressive string of legal victories in courts across the nation.” New York Times, March 29, 2001
“The National Right to Life Board of directors . . . expresses its gratitude to James Bopp for his enormous contribution to the protection of innocent human life and for his 35 years of service as general counsel to the National Right to Life Committee.” National Right to Life News, June 26, 2013
