The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (also called BCRA or McCain-Feingold) was a sweeping effort to restrict the potentially corrupting role of money in federal elections. It included among its provisions a ban on "soft money." McConnell v. Federal Elections Commission (2003) challenged the new law. In this excerpt of oral arguments in the case before the U.S. Supreme Court, Senator Mitch McConnell's counsel Kenneth Starr argues that the act went too far in banning soft money and that it limited the first amendment guarantee of free speech. Solicitor General Theodore Olson defends BCRA for the federal government. BCRA was the object of much contention with many other plaintiffs and defendants involved in the case. In the end the Supreme Court found that BCRA did not violate free speech, and that it was a legitimate use of the government's authority to limit "both the actual corruption threatened by large financial contributions and... the appearance of corruption." The deeply divided opinion of the Court was split 5-4, with two dissenting opinions that were included with the 300 page majority opinion and three additional opinions that were published separately.