Political Freedom and Economic Constraints: The Political Setting for the Problem of Twelve

Thank you to the editors of the University of Chicago Business Law Review, including Anna Dincher and Maddie Fleming, for organizing this rich conversation and for their helpful comments and suggestions. I am grateful to Emily Chapuis, Sarah Light, Elizabeth Pollman, and Robert Post for helpful conversations and feedback that sharpened these ideas. All errors are my own.

We are grateful for helpful comments from Reilly Steel, Heidi Welsh, and participants in the Wharton/Penn Law Women in Law and Finance Conference, the Penn Law Faculty Ad Hoc Seminar, the Berkeley Forum on Corporate Governance, the Section on Business Associations at the AALS Annual Meeting, the BYU Winter Deals Conference, the University of Chicago Business Law Review Symposium on the Corporation’s Role in Politics, the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore Faculty Seminar, the Global Corporate Governance Colloquium, the Global Institutional Governance Network, and the University of Texas Faculty Workshop.

We are grateful for helpful comments from Reilly Steel, Heidi Welsh, and participants in the Wharton/Penn Law Women in Law and Finance Conference, the Penn Law Faculty Ad Hoc Seminar, the Berkeley Forum on Corporate Governance, the Section on Business Associations at the AALS Annual Meeting, the BYU Winter Deals Conference, the University of Chicago Business Law Review Symposium on the Corporation’s Role in Politics, the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore Faculty Seminar, the Global Corporate Governance Colloquium, the Global Institutional Governance Network, and the University of Texas Faculty Workshop.

For helpful comments and discussions, I would like to thank Lucian Bebchuk, Shelley Alpern, Jane Bestor, John Coates, Alma Cohen, Louis Kaplow, Reiner Kraakman, Ignacio Orellana Garcia, Anete Pajuste, Ariel Rava, Kathy Spier, Tom Zur, and participants in the Harvard Law School Program on Corporate Governance Workshop, the Harvard Law School Graduate Program LLM Paper Presentation, The University of Chicago Business Law Review Symposium 2024, and the 2024 National Business Law Scholars Conference. I am also grateful to the Center for Political Accountability for sharing the data on the corporate political contributions to RAGA and DAGA, and in particular to Bruce Freed and Jeanne Hanna.

I am very grateful for the opportunity to participate in this symposium, for the comments and questions from its participants, and for the research assistance of Nathaniel Barry.