Legal Commentary

Just wanted to add these minor notes to the growing agglomeration of commentary:

1. For a terrific take on the legitimate uses of corporate money to advocate for policy positions, see Jill Fisch's How Do Corporations Play Politics?: The FedEx Story, 58 VAND. L. REV. 1495 (2005).  Fisch does a great job of showing how corporations need to play politics in order to manage their businesses.  I think the same applies to unions, as I argued here.
2. I predict Citizens United will lead to a new round of shareholder proposals designed to limit corporate political spending.  Shareholders -- particularly institutional shareholders -- will want to limit the money that flows out through theoretically "non-business-related" expenses. 

These two points are semi-contradictory.  Here's an effort to reconcile them: those companies whose contributions seem more ideological (more populist? more conservative?) will find themselves targeted by institutional shareholders, whereas those who play both sides of the street, in a low-key manner, will probably not be.