Several prominent members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives re-introduced yesterday the Shareholder Protection Act for debate. The bill would establish special corporate-governance rules for deciding when corporate resources may be spent on politics. Although it appears that the bill is unlikely to be adopted during this Congress, the approach it represents deserves consideration and support. In an article published last year in the Harvard Law Review, “Corporate Political Speech: Who Decides?,” we presented the case for such an approach. As we argued in “Corporate Political Speech,” political speech decisions are different from ordinary business decisions—and, thus, special rules are needed for deciding when a corporation may spend shareholder resources on politics.
The Shareholder Protection Act would establish a legal structure with three types of rules that apply when public companies wish to use corporate resources for political activity. These rules would require extensive disclosure, a role for independent directors, and shareholder approval.
First, the Shareholder Protection Act would require companies to disclose to shareholders each year both the amounts and recipients of the company’s spending on politics. Existing election law does not require disclosure of significant amounts of corporate spending on politics—especially contributions to intermediaries. Indeed, our article provided evidence indicating that five intermediaries who receive corporate contributions spent more than $130 million on lobbying and politics during the 2008 election cycle alone. Although the Act would mandate these disclosures by statute, the SEC currently has the authority to require disclosures of this type, and we urge the SEC to develop rules that would require that shareholders be given information on corporate political spending.
Second, the Act would require oversight of political spending by the board of directors. In our view, like other areas in which corporate law requires directors to take an active role in certain decisions—for instance, executive pay and financial audits—directors should be required to oversee corporate spending on politics. Because the interests of executives and shareholders may often diverge with respect to such spending, director oversight is especially desirable in this area. We also favor requiring directors to provide shareholders, in each year’s proxy statement, with a report explaining their choices and policies concerning the company’s spending on politics.
