The Yale Law Journal Online is reissuing Elizabeth Pollman's Citizens Not United: The Lack of Stockholder Voluntariness in Corporate Political Speech in light of recent developments at the Supreme Court.

With the Supreme Court hearing a new round of oral arguments in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Court appears poised to alter dramatically the landscape of corporate political speech law. The case concerns whether the government may limit a nonprofit political advocacy group from showing a film during election season when the film casts an electoral candidate in a negative light and is financed in part by corporate donations. 

I. Introduction: The Need for “Political” Analysis

My participation in the excellent conference on case selection in the Supreme Court was surely based neither on my experience lawyering before the Court, nor on my systematic study of the case selection process as a methodologically sophisticated political scientist. That being said, I have studied and written about the Supreme Court, and I believe that I do have something to contribute to the discussion—I believe that the discussions tended to ignore a particular eight-hundred-pound elephant, which can basically be described as “politics.” There is, I believe, no “neutral” vantage point from which to assess the Court’s decisions as to how many cases it takes and, of course, which particular cases it chooses to hear. Instead, perspectives will inevitably reflect a series of political viewpoints. I should note that “political” in this context is not necessarily synonymous with Democrat or Republican (though on occasion it might be); rather, it refers to the answers one gives to some rather basic questions about how our political institutions should be organized.