Business Law, Public Responsibility, and Ethics Commons^™

How Do Corporations Play Politics? The Fedex Story, Jill E. Fisch

All Faculty Scholarship

Corporate political activity has been the subject of federal regulation since 1907, and the restrictions on corporate campaign contributions and other political expenditures continue to increase. Most recently, Congress banned soft money donations in the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 ("BCRA"), a ban upheld by the Supreme Court in McConnell v. FEC. Significantly, although the omnibus BCRA clearly was not directed exclusively at corporations, the Supreme Court began its lengthy opinion in McConnell by referencing and endorsing the efforts of Elihu Root, more than a century ago, to prohibit corporate political contributions. Repeatedly, within the broad context of campaign …