Law Commons^™

Rehabilitating Concession Theory, Stefan Padfield

Oklahoma Law Review

In Citizens United v. FEC, a 5-4 majority of the Supreme Court ruled that “the Government cannot restrict political speech based on the speaker's corporate identity.” The decision remains controversial, with many arguing that the Court effectively overturned more than 100 years of precedent. I have previously argued that this decision turned on competing conceptions of the corporation, with the majority adopting a contractarian view while the dissent advanced a state concession view. However, the majority opinion was silent on the issue of corporate theory, and the dissent went so far as to expressly disavow any role for corporate …