John C. Bonifaz, Member, Board of Directors

John C. Bonifaz is the founder of the National Voting Rights Institute (NVRI). He is on leave as executive director as he campaigns in 2006 for Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Founded in 1994, NVRI serves as a prominent legal and public education center in the campaign finance reform field. NVRI is at the forefront of the growing movement to challenge the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1976 ruling in Buckley v. Valeo, which struck down congressional campaign spending limits on First Amendment grounds, equating money with speech. NVRI serves as defense counsel in the only two test cases in the country on the constitutionality of campaign spending limits. Either or both of these cases could result in an historic Supreme Court review of the Buckley ruling. Further, NVRI challenges the campaign finance system on voting rights grounds. Drawing on a line of Supreme Court cases invalidating the poll tax, high candidate filing fees, and exclusionary white primaries, NVRI redefines the campaign finance system as the newest voting rights barrier. NVRI is also a leading force in the country for defending in court meaningful campaign reform laws enacted through legislation or ballot initiative at the state and local level. NVRI is unmatched in its pioneering litigation and public education work across the country, ensuring that a movement in the courts complements the movement for reform at the legislative and grassroots level.

Mr. Bonifaz formerly served as the Staff Attorney for the Center for Responsive Politics in Washington, D.C., a leading research authority on the influence of private money in the electoral process. Mr. Bonifaz is the co-author with Jamin Raskin, a constitutional law professor at American University’s Washington College of Law, of two law review articles which argue that the current campaign finance system violates the constitutional guarantee of equal protection for all: “Equal Protection and the Wealth Primary,” Yale Law & Policy Review (Winter 1993) and “The Constitutional Imperative and Practical Superiority of Democratically Financed Elections,” Columbia Law Review (Spring 1994). He is also the co-author, with Professor Raskin, of The Wealth Primary: Campaign Fundraising and the Constitution, published in November 1994 by the Center for Responsive Politics.

Mr. Bonifaz is a 1999 recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. In awarding the five-year fellowship, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation stated:

Bonifaz, a public interest lawyer, uses innovative litigation to reexamine campaign finance reform arguments typically debated on first amendment grounds. Through the National Voting Rights Institute, an organization he founded, Bonifaz recasts the legal arguments to focus on fourteenth amendment protections, challenging the relationship between money and politics.

Mr. Bonifaz also maintains a private practice with his father, Cristobal Bonifaz, which specializes in international human rights and environmental law cases. The firm’s work has received significant attention, in particular the case of Maria Aguinda v. Texaco. In Aguinda, Mr. Bonifaz served as plaintiffs’ co-counsel in a federal court case brought by Amazonian Indians against Texaco (now Chevron-Texaco) for the widespread destruction caused by the company to the Ecuadorian Amazon during its twenty years of oil drilling in the region. The firm has since re-filed the case in the Ecuadorian courts and, in accordance with a federal appeals court ruling in Aguinda, a judgment from the Ecuadorian judiciary will be enforceable in the United States. In addition, Mr. Bonifaz served as plaintiffs’ lead counsel in John Doe I v. President Bush, a constitutional challenge to President Bush’s authority to wage war against Iraq absent a congressional declaration of war.

Mr. Bonifaz is the author of the forthcoming book: Warrior-King: George W. Bush and The Looming Irrelevancy of Our Courts, Congress, and Constitution (Context Books-NY).

Mr. Bonifaz is a 1992 cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School. He has written and spoken extensively around the country on the anti-democratic nature of the private financing of public elections and on the federal court battle to hold Texaco accountable for its reckless oil drilling practices in the Ecuadorian Amazon.