Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society

Volume 23, 2012

Proceedings of the Twenty-Third Annual Meeting

Corruption and Campaign Finance Law

This paper explains and criticizes the definition of corruption used by the U.S. Supreme Court in its campaign finance decisions and proposes components of a new definition to be applied by the Court. The paper also offers a preliminary assessment of the impact of the Citizens United v. FEC decision of 2010, and suggests that much of the analysis to date has been inaccurate or superficial. Further, given the Court’s expansive analysis and application of the First Amendment to corporate political activities in its latest decisions, the paper also suggests alternative checks on corporate political power related to shareholder activism and corporate governance.