Memory, Resistance, and Doubt
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2025
Abstract
Burroughs v. United States is not a famous case. But it could be. Its central character was a famous man. James Cannon, Jr., was a bishop in the Methodist church, a player in the worlds of business and banking, a ruthless political power broker, and a zealous Prohibitionist. In Virginia, where he lived, his role within the Democratic Party earned him the informal title of “the dry boss of the state,” and his influence extended well beyond the Old Dominion. Indeed, the essayist H.L. Mencken identified Cannon as the most important Prohibitionist in the country. “More than any other man,” Mencken wrote, it was Cannon who “had been responsible for forcing Prohibition upon a suffering United States.”
But as sometimes happens to political bosses, Cannon eventually attracted the adverse attention of federal prosecutors. In 1928, Cannon used his political muscle to oppose the presidential candidacy of Al Smith, the eventual Democratic nominee, who favored the repeal of Prohibition. According to an indictment filed against Cannon and his personal secretary, a woman named Ada Burroughs, some of Cannon’s anti-Smith activities fell afoul of a federal campaign finance law, the Corrupt Practices Act, which regulated financial contributions and expenditures related to presidential elections.
In their defense, Burroughs and Cannon challenged the constitutionality of the Corrupt Practices Act. The Constitution, they noted, provides that “[e]ach State shall appoint” presidential electors “in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct.” In their view, that language indicated that the regulation of presidential elections was a matter of state law. Congress’s role in legislating with respect to presidential elections, they contended, was limited to “determining ‘the time of choosing the electors, and the day on which they shall give their votes,’” because that is the only aspect of the process that the Constitution expressly empowers Congress to regulate. Rules for how presidential campaigns were financed were therefore beyond Congress’s ken, and the Corrupt Practices Act was unconstitutional.
The Supreme Court rejected that argument. Justice George Sutherland’s opinion for the Court noted that the Act, by its terms, only covered political activities intended to influence “the election of presidential and vice presidential electors in two or more states.” As such, Sutherland wrote, the Act “in no sense invades any exclusive state power” because it regulated something that no state could adequately deal with alone. Moreover, the presidency is a crucial national office, and denying Congress the power to assure the integrity of presidential elections would “deny to the nation in a vital particular the power of self protection.” Sutherland continued as follows: “Congress, undoubtedly, possesses that power, as it possesses every other power essential to preserve the departments and institutions of the general government from impairment or destruction, whether threatened by force or by corruption.”
Recommended Citation
Primus, Richard A. "Memory, Resistance, and Doubt." William and Mary Bill of Rights Journal 33, no. 2 (2025): 465-482.
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