Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2009
Abstract
As the Supreme Court reconsiders prior decisions upholding limits on corporate electioneering from general funds, this Essay suggests that the longstanding concern about the lack of stockholder assent to corporate political speech is more compelling than ever. Patterns of U.S. stockholding have significantly changed in the past several decades so as to heighten the concern and caution against a broad overruling of precedents. Stockholders' ability to sell their securities or pursue a derivative action, and other means of "corporate democracy," do not alleviate the concern. A broad decision in favor of Citizens United could leave even stockholders who carefully screen and monitor their investments at risk of having money they invested used for political advocacy they oppose.
Keywords
Citizens United, corporate political speech, corporate political spending, corporate speech, shareholder voluntariness, stockholder voluntariness, Bellotti
Publication Title
Yale Law Journal Online
Repository Citation
Pollman, Elizabeth, "Citizens Not United: The Lack of Stockholder Voluntariness in CorporatePolitical Speech" (2009). All Faculty Scholarship. 2564.
https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/faculty_scholarship/2564
Included in
Business Organizations Law Commons, Constitutional Law Commons, Law and Economics Commons, Legal History Commons, Legal Theory Commons, Supreme Court of the United States Commons
Publication Citation
119 Yale L.J. Online 53 (2009)