In 2010, the courts reversed decades of legal precedent when they said it was OK for corporations and unions to spend as much as they want to put their favorite candidates in office.
Laws aimed at limiting the corrupting influence of corporate money in elections go back more than a century while restrictions on union spending go back more than 60 years.
So what happened?
The short answer is, the First Amendment happened — or at least a new interpretation of it did.
In a nutshell, corporations and unions now have the same First Amendment right as people do to spend as much money as they want on advertising and other political spending to get candidates elected — as long as they aren't in cahoots with them.
Some history
The government has been consistent, though not always effective, in attempting to insulate elections from the corrupting influence of corporations and labor unions.
Congress first banned corporations from funding federal campaigns in 1907 with theTillman Act. President Theodore Roosevelt, the great reformer of the Gilded Age, said at the time that such a prohibition would be "an effective method of stopping the evils aimed at in corrupt practices acts."
(Ironically, it was Roosevelt himself who benefited from those contributions.) In 1947, the Taft-Hartley Act extended the ban to labor unions. The laws were weak and largely unenforceable.
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