Are U.S. political parties “private” organizations, or are they public? The answer to that question may be at the heart of what is wrong with American politics, and there doesn’t seem to be an agreed-upon answer to it. Some say that political parties are “semi-public,” which sounds a bit like being “semi-private.” In his The Parties in Court: American Political Parties under the Constitution (2013), Robert C. Wigton writes: Political parties have long occupied an uncertain place in American constitutional law. Parties were not mentioned in the Constitution and developed largely outside the constitutional system. As a consequence, they have grown to possess attributes of both public and private organizations and undertake activities associated with both types of organizations. If American political parties have evolved into hybrid entities, then another question arises: should the parties be entirely private? If not, should the...(Read Full Article)