Note

A “Corporate Democracy”? Freedom of Speech and the SEC

In Citizens United, the Supreme Court stated that increased recognition for corporate speech rights is not problematic because corporations are themselves mini-democracies; shareholders have mechanisms to check management control over corporate speech. But due to statutory changes and judicial actions, these checks and balances are no longer effective. Managers have nearly unbridled power over corporations’ expanded speech rights, allowing them to use companies as outsized megaphones for their own personal political and social positions.

An axiom of First Amendment doctrine is that the remedy for speech that some find problematic is “more speech, not enforced silence.” Thus, if the increase in speech rights for corporate managers is an issue, the solution is not to rein in those rights but rather to see how investors’ speech is limited and to remove those barriers, enabling investors to fully participate in the corporate democracy.

Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) regulations prohibit investors from communicating about corporate elections without filing disclosures and providing proxies to every shareholder. These regulations limit investor speech and are slanted in favor of management because they exacerbate the collective-action problem among shareholders who oppose poorly performing managers. Investors should challenge these regulations on First Amendment grounds, and courts should apply some form of exacting scrutiny because speech in corporate elections is as important as political speech in many circumstances. Striking down these regulations would restore balance to the investor–management relationship and allow corporate speech to fully reflect the will of companies’ true owners: their shareholders.

The Irrelevance of Blackstone: Rethinking the Eighteenth-Century Importance of the Commentaries

This Note challenges William Blackstone’s modern position as the “oracle of the law” in the eighteenth century. In a time when the status of legal doctrines at the Founding is of renewed significance in interpreting the Constitution, it is especially important to ensure that the sources of these doctrines comport with historical practices. This Note looks beyond the usual story of Blackstone’s influence, as told by the significant circulation of his work. It turns instead to the work’s practical significance for legal education in the decades preceding the Constitutional Convention. By using curricula and student notes—referred to as commonplace books—to discover what was actually considered influential in the legal profession of the period, a more comprehensive perspective of eighteenth-century legal thought is uncovered. While Blackstone was apparently known to these late colonists, his work was far from “the most widely read law book in eighteenth-century America.” Instead, more traditional treatises and English reporters dominated legal learning until at least 1787. It is these admittedly more impenetrable works which should inform our understanding of the common law as it existed at the Founding.

The Missing Theory of Representation in Citizens United

Restrictions on campaign speech violate the First Amendment unless they are aimed at preventing either corruption or the appearance of corruption. The definition of corruption is thus central to campaign finance jurisprudence. In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310 (2010), the Supreme Court defined corruption narrowly, to include a quid pro quo exchange and nothing else. In this Note, I examine the viability of that definition by combining two previously dissociated bodies of literature—one exploring the Court’s varying definitions of corruption in campaign finance cases and the other addressing the proper role of a representative in a democracy. I argue that, although any viable definition of corruption must be based on an underlying theory of representation, no commonly accepted theory of representation underlies the narrow quid pro quo definition adopted in Citizens United. Thus, I suggest the Court take up another campaign finance case soon, so that it can either (1) articulate a theory of representation that justifies its narrow quid pro quo definition of corruption or (2) reconsider that definition.

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