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. (shrink)

This paper challenges the conventional wisdom concerning the impact of the Citizens United v. FEC decision by examining the flow of corporate money into the 2012 election. The decision, which is consistent with most prior case law and was not a radical departure, promoted the use of super PACs and 501-c committees for political money that were not widely used by corporations, and the super PACs and c-4 committees were largely ineffective in the 2012 election. They also did not produce (...) a marked advantage for the Republican Party, especially in the presidential election. The Citizens United decision did, however, lead to other legal and regulatory developments in an effort to promote greater disclosure, though those developments have not been successful. Investors have been somewhat more successful in promoting limits on corporate political spending through shareholder proposals. Some state laws and upcoming court cases maylimit other restrictions on political contributions. (shrink)

This paper applies an eight-step model of crisis management to the Gulf Oil disaster and discusses potential legal liabilities for BP. The eight steps are: ascertaining the facts, portraying the problem, allocating responsibility, responding to critics, adopting new policies, implementing new procedures, utilizing political/legal tactics, and costs in money and credibility. While crisis management responses often fall into either uniformly positive or uniformly negative patterns and outcomes, the BP case falls into a more complex pattern, where the company did some (...) things well and other things poorly, with BP making its worst mistakes in the pre-crisis stage. After examining BP’s response, the longer version of this paper examines the regulatory role and the application of the capture theory to the Minerals Management Service of the Department of Interior. That section and associated references are available upon request to the author. (shrink)