The Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu The leading online blog in the fields of corporate governance and financial regulation. Tue, 05 May 2026 11:32:08 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.5.8 https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/cropped-photography-4-e1706898544564-1-32x32.png What Effect Will Citizens United Have on Shareholder Wealth? – The Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu 32 32 What Effect Will Citizens United Have on Shareholder Wealth? https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2010/09/30/what-effect-will-citizens-united-have-on-shareholder-wealth/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=what-effect-will-citizens-united-have-on-shareholder-wealth https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2010/09/30/what-effect-will-citizens-united-have-on-shareholder-wealth/#comments Thu, 30 Sep 2010 13:11:36 +0000 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/corpgov/?p=13131?d=20230314134527EDT Posted by John Coates, Harvard Law School, on Thursday, September 30, 2010
Editor's Note:

John Coates is the John F. Cogan, Jr. Professor of Law and Economics at Harvard Law School. This post relates to Professor Coates’ working paper, Corporate Governance and Corporate Political Activity: What Effect Will Citizens United Have on Shareholder Wealth?, which is available here.

In Citizens United, the Supreme Court relaxed the ability of corporations to spend money on elections, rejecting a shareholder-protection rationale for restrictions on spending.

The decision was a ‘shock’ to corporate governance of the majority of the largest US companies ­ overturning long-standing understandings about how shareholder money could be used by corporate managers in the political arena. The result is effectively to force future campaign finance regulation to invade and become intertwined with the domain of corporate governance regulation ­ with potential for politicizing that domain in a way that even the Enron crisis and the recent financial meltdown have not achieved.

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