In order to avoid a chilling effect on teacher speech, the Pickering standard must be reconsidered. This Note argues that an actual disruption standard should be a required component of the Pickering balancing test once a court has determined that the speech in question addresses a matter of public concern. By retaining the public concern inquiry, and mandating that an actual disruption is needed in order to take action against Internet speech, both teachers’ interests and schools’ interests will be adequately balanced.

In this Article, I will use recall elections as a way to consider the current state of campaign finance jurisprudence as it relates to all the mechanisms of direct democracy. Recalls provide a different framework through which to assess campaign finance rules because they are explicitly hybrid elections, combining a ballot question about the recall of an official and, sometimes simultaneously, the election of a successor. Part I will lay out the structure of the recall process, particularly in California and Wisconsin, the two states in which statewide recalls of governors have shaken the political establishment and caught the attention of the nation. Part II will analyze the constitutional issues raised by campaign finance regimes that include contribution limitations affecting recall elections, focusing on Citizens United v. FEC and other relevant recent decisions. Part III will extend this analysis and argue that the conclusions reached about permissible regulatory structures in the context of recalls implicate the way states and municipalities regulate money in ballot measure campaigns generally. Moreover, the conclusions that emerge from the analysis powerfully suggest that the Court’s broader campaign finance jurisprudence ignores the most compelling justification for regulating money in politics: working to ensure equality of the opportunity to participate in the political realm.

The analysis generates a number of insights. Voter intent, unlike legislative intent, can be conceptualized concretely and identified. Judges who seek the majoritarian interpretation of an initiative must consider the views of all voters, including those who voted against it. In some circumstances, judges who interpret initiatives in light of their career prospects can be understood to act legalistically. Finally, the same electoral accountability that can lead state judges to interpret initiatives in majoritarian fashion has a downside: it can make their constitutional review of initiatives too deferential. This gives rise to a choice. To get the searching judicial review that initiatives arguably warrant may require a sacrifice of the majoritarian interpretations that initiatives deserve.

We begin with a simple question but one that is not asked often enough: Do voters have obligations to their fellow citizens in how they vote? Answering this question requires a consideration of the voter’s role—and relationship to her fellow citizens—in a democratic polity. Although the philosophical literature on the ethics of voting does not differentiate between voting in candidate elections and direct democracy elections, we explain in this Essay how important and underappreciated differences between these two types of voting—and the roles and relationships they involve—can underwrite different obligations.