The Undergraduate Law Review at UC San Diego

The United States government was built to protect against a tyrannical government in which the wishes of the minority elite are prioritized ahead of the wishes of the majority. The fear of such minority influence in government is now grounded in the rise of wealthy corporations. With the rise of corporations, the United States has become increasingly economically dependent on major companies. Corporations are uniquely positioned economically to bargain for political advantage, and political campaigns are especially vulnerable to this relationship due to their heavy reliance on donors. Consequently, campaign finance laws have been established with the goal of curtailing corporate political influence. Campaign finance laws have undergone several interpretations by the highest court in the United States to address evolving public concerns surrounding corruption. Most notable is the 1975 Buckley v. Valeo case, where the Supreme Court ruled that the wealthy minority not be given free rein to deposit funds toward their favorite candidates, citing corruption and the appearance of corruption as justification. From this, one can derive the appearance of corruption to mean any outcome by which public trust in the American democratic system is justly diminished. However, dissenters opined that despite governmental interest against corruption, the Court’s remedy was overinclusive and thus violated First Amendment protections to political speech. The twenty-first century rulings of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission overturned precedent and opened a floodgate of money that can now participate in politics, birthing an over 3.5 billion dollar lobbying industry by which a direct line of communication between large companies and legislative leaders was granted. Such a connection between the two powers has constructed a dangerous relationship between Big Money and political mobility. The goal of this paper is to understand how the rulings in Citizens United and McCutcheon changed the extent to which ordinary persons can access and shape government. This paper understands the shaping of government to mean any means by which an individual or group of individuals influence policymakers; unequal access to the shaping of government then refers to any circumstance under which a minority possesses a disproportionate influence over a policymaker’s attention compared to ordinary persons. To accomplish its goal, this paper will study the relevant facts of the two cases, assess the arguments through which the Court’s decisions were made, and gauge the possible outcomes of the Court’s decisions.