Sarah Haan Publishes “Corporations and Labor Unions in Election Law” in the Oxford Handbook of American Election Law The book chapter examines the role of corporations in campaign finance and reform efforts.

By Law Communications
November 1, 2024

Washington and Lee law professor Sarah Haan has published an book chapter in The Oxford Handbook of American Election Law. The chapter, titled “Corporations and Labor Unions in Election Law,” examines the role of the corporation in campaign finance. Haan explains that the U.S. Constitution is silent on the subject of corporate constitutional rights, including the role of corporations in elections.

“Public opinion data suggest that a majority of Americans are concerned about the effect of corporate electoral spending on democracy and would like the law to impose greater restrictions. Since the 1970s, however, the law has moved against public sentiment, as judicial opinions have cited the First Amendment to erode existing restrictions on corporate campaign finance. This trend hit a high mark in 2010, when the U.S. Supreme Court decided Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, deregulating corporate and union independent expenditures. Remarkably, corporate spending on elections did not swamp campaign finance in the wake of that case, but transparency problems continue to obscure our understanding of the impact of corporate spending on the political process. In American campaign finance, money is speech, corporations control vast stores of it, and only a few guardrails remain in place to regulate corporate spending on elections,” writes Haan.

The first book of its kind in the field, The Oxford Handbook of American Election Law brings together forty-seven leading scholars of election law to explore the doctrines and debates that define this field. Contributors to the Handbook introduce election law’s core themes, provide summaries of its leading cases, guide the reader through key scholarly debates, and suggest areas for future research. The book is available from the Oxford University Press website.

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