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The Separation Of Business And State, Timothy K. Kuhner

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National scandals involving corporate fraud, political corruption, lobbyists, and campaign finance have called attention to worrisome dynamics: the decreasing power of natural persons relative to legal persons in the political process; and the erosion of civic or democratic values in favor of corporate values. Both dynamics relate to the vexing problem of money in politics. American political thought and constitutional structure offer much-needed guidance in the form of analogies and separationist logic.

This Essay recasts the phenomenon of money in politics as a separation problem that is, a problem of the private sphere of business overreaching into the public sphere …