Corporate campaign money? Professor Ciara Torres-Spelliscy joins FEC Forum in Washington

Professor Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, an election law pundit and author of the new book, Corporate Citizen? An Argument for the Separation of Corporation and State, joined a Federal Election Commission Forum on Corporate Political Spending and Campaign Influence on June 23 in Washington, D.C.

Professor Torres-Spelliscy presented on a panel that addressed the impact of corporate money and foreign influence on the election and the FEC’s role in responding.

“In this election year, the topic of the appropriate bounds of corporate power continues to be raised by candidates and voters alike,” Professor Torres-Spelliscy writes in Corporate Citizen. “History shows that size matters. We’ve gone from too big to fail to too big to jail.”

“We cannot reach the point where there are firms that are too big to regulate,” Torres-Spelliscy writes. “And gigantism matters a great deal if real (human) citizens are expected to compete with corporations for the attention of elected officials in policy making, or for the attention of their fellow citizens during elections. Protecting the ideal of one-person-one-vote requires mitigating the power of corporate money in politics.”

In Corporate Citizen, Torres-Spelliscy addresses a lack of corporate accountability in areas ranging from protecting the environment to paying taxes and respecting human rights.

“If we are guilty of committing a crime, we can expect to be held accountable under the rule of law,” Torres-Spelliscy writes. “But with corporations, which are at their essence just a pile of papers, U.S. courts have granted them more and more rights, and then simultaneously, absolved many firms from responsibilities.”

Read more: Professor Torres-Spelliscy examines the expansion of corporate rights in the American Constitution Society Blog.

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Post date: June 28, 2016

Media contact: Kate Bradshaw
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