Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin's Snuff Box to Citizens United

by Zephyr Teachout, Jo Anna Perrin (Narrator)

For two centuries, the Framers' ideas about political corruption flourished in the courts, even in the absence of clear rules governing voters, civil officers, and elected officials. In the 1970s, the U.S. Supreme Court began to narrow the definition of corruption, and the meaning has since changed dramatically. No case makes that clearer than Citizens United. In 2010, one of the most consequential Court decisions in American political history gave wealthy corporations the right to spend unlimited money to influence elections. Justice Anthony Kennedy's majority opinion treated corruption as nothing more than explicit bribery. With unlimited spending transforming American politics for the worse, Citizens United was not just bad law but bad history.Corruption in America clearly shows that if the American experiment in self-government is to have a future, then we must revive the traditional meaning of corruption and embrace an old ideal.

Genres: History, Politics, Nonfiction, American History, Law, Economics, Government

MP3 CD

First published September 15, 2014

Reviews

[Robert Wechsler · Rating 4 out of 5]

What makes this book is the passion with which Teachout wrote it. Yes, it helps to be a lawyer, since she discusses many judicial decisions. But she does it with great emotion and erudition both, and she tells some wonderful historical tales.

But this is not a history of corruption in America. It is a history of the idea of corruption, and what the Founders and elected officials and judges since have done and said to prevent it. Teachout is very disheartened by recent Supreme Court decisions, which have narrowed the concept of corruption down to almost nothing. But even her conception is more narrow than my own (I work in the area of government conflicts of interest). The book focuses on gifts to government officials, including campaign contributions.

But other than this limitation, this is an excellent book, which I highly recommend.

[Mal Warwick · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you’re among the four out of five Americans who decry Citizens United as a tragic misstep, law professor Zephyr Teachout will show you just how far outside the bounds of precedent and tradition the Supreme Court stepped when it produced this misbegotten ruling.

“This new legal order,” Ms. Teachout writes, “treats corruption lightly and in a limited way. It narrows the scope of what is considered corruption to explicit deals. It reclassifies influence-seeking as normal and desirable political behavior.” Teachout attributes the Court’s logic to a loss of confidence in democracy, though I might question whether the Right-Wing ideology that holds sway on today’s Court has ever held any brief for democracy. “The Court has become populated by academics and appellate court justices, and not by people with experience of power and politics, who understand the ways in which real problems of money and influence manifest themselves.”

For two centuries, the prevailing view in American legislatures and courts was that factually demonstrable, quid pro quo bribery and extortion were unusual phenomena — that the potential for political and judicial corruption was far broader and rested on the cultivation of personal relationships that could grow on the strength of financial support. “By corruption, the early generations meant excessive private interests influencing the exercise of public power.” Thus, until the 1970s, it was broadly taken for granted that large corporate contributions could distort the policymaking process. Then, in 1976, in Buckley v. Valeo, the Supreme Court overturned the campaign spending limits that were a centerpiece of the 1974 campaign finance reform legislation passed with broad bipartisan support in the wake of Watergate. Basing its reasoning on Buckley, the Roberts Court in 2010 then, in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, overturned a consensus that had lasted for two centuries by opening the floodgates to unlimited corporate campaign spending.

Teachout, who recently ran an insurgent campaign for Governor of New York against incumbent Andrew Cuomo, explores the history of views on corruption from colonial times to the present. She cites the seminal legal and political thinkers whose views shaped those of the Founding Fathers — chiefly Montesquieu — and details the evolving legislative and judicial treatment of bribery, extortion, and more subtle forms of corruption within the American political system.

Teachout demonstrates that corruption was one of the Founders’ overriding concerns when they framed the Constitution. The fundamental separation of powers into executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government — a concept taken whole from Montesquieu — and the bicameral design of the legislature were adopted in response to the potential for corruption inherent in unchecked power.

Is it ironic — or merely further proof of hypocrisy on the Right — that the “conservative” jurists who dominate today’s Supreme Court view themselves as strict constructionists limited by the Founders’ intentions, except when the Founders’ views clash with their pro-corporate ideology?

It’s time for us to return to first principles. An important early step might be to take a fresh look at Montesquieu, who “put citizens at the center of the thriving republic. For him, the true danger in a republic is mass disaffection with public life, when society turns away from trying to influence government and citizens instead turn toward their own preoccupations and examining how they can personally benefit from particular laws. Montesquieu argued that government breaks down when citizens do not care about it.”

In that light, what might we think about the most recent Federal elections, in which, as Time Magazine wrote, “Only 36.4% of eligible voters voted . . ., down from 40.9% who voted in 2010, according to preliminary analysis by Michael McDonald at the University of Florida. The last time voter turnout was that low was 1942, when only 33.9% of voters cast ballots, according to the United States Elections Project.”

As Time notes, “The last time voter turnout for a national election was as low as it was on Nov.4, Hitler was still in power, and Mitch McConnell was only nine months old.” What does that say about how much US citizens today care about our government?

[Rick Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book itself is quite good, quite dense, and quite eye-opening. This is an academic examination of corruption in the United States. As Buffalo Springfield says, “There’s something happening here”

So at the end of January, after being briefed by the senate intelligence committee about the Coronavirus, but before the news was generally available, Richard Burr, North Carolina Republican, Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, who is also a member of the Intelligence Committee with Burr; James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma; and Kelly Loeffler, Republican of Georgia went and sold millions worth of stocks that they owned. As of September everyone but Burr has had their charges dropped for lack of evidence. It’s possible this was completely innocent and normal, massive selloffs possibly are a routine part of balancing your portfolio in the middle of January. Read an investment book gosh. But this event sits in my stomach like a soggy greaseburger left out for a few days before eating.

The Panama Papers, released 4ish years ago, details a massive conspiracy (a real one, not the bullshit you see on social media) to launder money and avoid taxes. The US has functionally done nothing (Ctrl + F, “United States”) in response to the fact that billions of dollars in taxes are being avoided each year. A clear case of private interest acting against the public good, yet no action.

And lastly (not that I’m wanting for examples I just have other pressing matters to attend to), as a number of news outlets have reported, the Trump Organization has continued conducting business abroad while Donald traipses around the White House issuing executive Tweets.

The founding fathers were very paranoid that their new baby nation would end up like everything they despised about England. Strong central government, weak judicial system, a king who doles out favors and land in return for fealty. So much so that they often just did the opposite of whatever England did in many situations, including the Emoluments clause that required the disclosure of any gifts from foreign representatives without congressional approval.

You can call these events a lot of things, Zephyr Teachout (real name, definitely not a cartoon character invented by Dan Harmon) would probably link these events back to corruption. I read Zephyrs article a couple months ago about how Biden is “has a corruption problem“ which seems absolutely ridiculous when compared to the nepotist in chief. But after reading the book it makes a lot of sense. The book revolves around the idea that "money corrupts" and holy shit can Biden raise a lot of money.

I was delighted that the book itself was thoroughly researched and wound up being very interesting look at historical corruption across the United States. I think there was a part of me that expected this to be a bit hyperbolic and screechy. But it examines from the founding fathers and their concerns that Ben Franklin was a French Manchurian Candidate, through a wide variety of contentious and suspect land cases across the 1800s and 1900s, all the way to fucking Citizens United (you have to include the 'fucking' as I understand), this book examines the complex interplay between times where personal interest has outweighed the public good. Focusing mostly on specific times where money or general bribery have been a factor in that conflict.

I think somewhere between 20%- 30% of the content in this book sailed straight over my head. The author is impressively well versed in supporting texts. But unfortunately I don't have the base of knowledge to really critically evaluate something like this. I don’t have an extensive constitutional background, I'm just some asshole in Texas who reads a lot. The impression I got was that the target audience is people with law degrees and con. law professors. However the book itself is not legalistic in style, I found it easy enough to read, but it does get very pedantic at points. I glazed over for a chapter or two in the middle, and instead of trying to hurt my brain by going back and making sense of it, I just sort of carried on.

You would probably get more out of this book with a more in depth knowledge of general legal shit. How legal precedent moves over decades, maybe a passing familiarity with the cases described, knowing more about Hamilton than only having bootlegged a video of the musical. As it stands, I hope to revisit this in a few years when I hopefully know more about those things myself.

[Mehrsa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Zephyr Teachout makes her case brilliantly. Overturn Citizens United and Buckley!

[Ericka Clou · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book by an attorney about the law. I’m an attorney but I think this is basically comprehensible to non-attorneys (though non-attorneys lack a background in the importance of “intention” under the law). It was a bit dry for me but her historical view of corruption in the United States was interesting and important. As a country, we’ve clearly made the wrong legal decisions regarding lobbying and campaign finance. Our system has long been like the card game of assholes. Once someone wins, he or she makes all the subsequent rules to make sure he stays King or at least never falls to asshole again. It’s interesting to learn about how concerned the founders and subsequent generations were about corruption and yet they were unable to implement meaningful protections. And here we are now.

Teachout doesn’t make any good suggestions here but the research I’ve seen suggests that the only way to fix anything now is through state laws. When enough state laws are in agreement about a particular issue, the tide can sometimes be turned. But majorities (as well as minority protections) no longer apply.

[Hana]

I came across this thanks to Matt Stoller's excellent review.

If there’s one way to summarize Zephyr Teachout’s extraordinary book Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin’s Snuff Box to Citizens United, it is that today we are living in Benjamin Franklin’s dystopia. Her basic contention, which is not unfamiliar to most of us in sentiment if not in detail, is that the modern Supreme Court has engaged in a revolutionary reinterpretation of corruption and therefore in American political life....What makes the book so remarkable is its scope and ability to link current debates to our rich and forgotten history.

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This fine book, by the constitutional law professor who outpolled Andrew Cuomo in the 2014 Democratic primary in half the counties of New York State, looks at 200 + years of American history to document how and by what steps the definition of "corruption" has been itself corroded. The author holds that founding fathers like Madison were intent on not letting money or birth buy undue influence with judges, legislatures, state and federal officials and, to a lesser extent with referenda. She focuses on campaign contributions, both direct and arm's length.

Prof. Teachout argues cogently that recent Supreme Court decisions narrowly define corruption as quid pro quo bribery, not the buying of influence and access. She reviews in clear layman's language important cases like Buckley v. Valeo (1976), McCormick v. United States (1991), Citizens United (2010) , and McCutcheon v. FEC (2014).

The author recognizes that it is very hard to define the buying of influence and the buying of votes, impossible to prove that campaign contributions influenced any one legislator's vote, still less caused passage or defeat. Let's say (my example) someone gives $5000 to the campaign of legislator A who's against Proposed law X. A votes against X, but X is enacted. Someone else gives the same amount to legislator B who has spoken out in favor of proposed law X. B votes for X. Is the first donation less corrupt because it failed to sway the final tally than the second one, which supported passage?

If A had voted for X instead of against, would the donation to A's campaign fund be even less corrupt because it fell shorter of its hope? No answers to these questions.

I agree with the author that the the American campaign financing system has brought America low from its once-proud and more egalitarian beginnings of that system ( before campaigns needed to be financed). I agree the Supreme Court has accelerated the decline.

To my sorrow, I can't see hope in the solutions Prof. Teachout hopefully suggests (p. 299) such as a ban on letting legislators and staffers take later jobs in "the influence industry" (e.g. lobbying) and a ban on letting that class "[hold] stock in companies affected by legislation." The second is impossible though theoretically desirable. The first is a good idea, but I cannot imagine legislators outlawing themselves from future income.

A cap on contributions can always be got around by subdividing the main entity. Adherents of both major parties have practiced this for years. A cap on spending does, sorry to say, seem to me a restraint on action.

Perhaps the only way (not mentioned by the author) to remove the influence of plutocrats and rich companies from American elections would be to ban television advertising, which must be the major cost to most statewide and regional campaigns. That would, unfortunately, also be a ban on free speech as the Supreme Court sees it.

In summary, this brilliant work is deeply discouraging. It will make me, however, pay more attention to efforts now ongoing to undo Citizens United.

[Mark Gowan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Zephyr Teachout is a lawyer and it shows in this book, but not in a bad way. Lawyers interpret not only legal precedence and what that precedence can and cannot lead to, but they do it with the interpretation of language. Often this "interpretation" is rhetorical and not really helpful. But, this is not the case with with Teachout's book, Corruption.

Following the word "corruption" through its many alterations, differences, modifications, reviews, revises, revisions, and variations (see how easy rhetoric is!) throughout history, she shows the larger evolution of the word and why it evolved in the first place. In short, the book is a study of why the word has gone through so many conversions, deformations, distortions, metamorphoses, mutations, transfigurations, transformations (I can't help myself).

the answer becomes clear throughout the book, but especially when we enter the 20th and 21st centuries, and especially in the United States. The story is an old one, centered around the concept of capitalism, in the United States a religion. And this is the crux of Teachout's point: the main and most important use of language is not necessarily for communication, but for the legalization of profit. The word, "corruption" did not evolve linguistically, but because it needed to be redefined to fit the needs of the rich, of corporations, of politics and so forth.

So, Teachout's book delves into the depths of language, yes, but more importantly, in its uses, both good and bad. This is a great audio book, but is educational and easy to follow. Unfortunately, it is also a needed book to remind us that it is not only us that is doing the talking.

[DW Rowlands · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was pretty impressed by this book. As a history text, it covers a decent amount of material that isn't well-known, or at least wasn't known to me, and I think of myself as pretty well-educated about American history for an amateur.

The book's real purpose, though, is as a criticism of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision and the more general school of jurisprudence that led up to it. Teachout's basic argument is that the path Supreme Court corruption jurisprudence has taken since roughly the 1970's is flawed both in terms of its understanding of the nature of corruption and in terms of its understanding of the history of American corruption law. I found her arguments largely persuasive in that regard.

[Nick Van Brunt · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a top-notch survey on the development of legislation and jurisprudence on corruption in America. I assume some law schools are using this as a text in whole or in part in connection with constitutional law classes. That said, you don't have to be a lawyer to appreciate this book, as Teachout writes accessibly and economically.

While the book was written in 2014 in the wake of Citizens United and McCutcheon, one can imagine an addendum will be written to include the current administration at some point. As numerous emoluments clause lawsuits are filed against Trump, including one in which the author is involved, this book feels particularly relevant today.

[Andy Arnold · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book provides a solid history of the legal and moral concept of “corruption” in America. This history has culminated with the idea that money is speech: this idea has given us Citizens United, which allows the inequality of wealth to translate into inequality of political influence. America’s political system is corrupt, and if you believe the current Supreme Court majority, the First Amendment is this democracy’s suicide pact.

[Chuy Ruiz · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great read. Basically, a history of the United States, centered around corruption through the ages. Everything from how it was addressed in the build up to and framing of the constitution, to the modern age. Very relevant in today's political climate. Learned quite a bit.

[Nick Klagge · Rating 5 out of 5]

Zephyr Teachout is an awesome person, and this is an awesome book. If you happen to live in New York's 19th congressional district (Dutchess County), you can vote for her for Congress this fall!

She is also a law professor at Fordham University, and this book shows the overlap between her legal studies and her political convictions. At a high level, the book is a critique of the Citizens' United supreme court decision. In service of that critique, as the title suggests, ZT provides an overview of American corruption law from the 1700s to the present. This history is written to be accessible to a non-specialist reader (although while reading it, I felt that I had some inkling of the grind of law school!).

To vastly oversimplify her argument, she draws a distinction between "prophylactic" corruption law, which uses ex ante blanket prohibitions on certain activities that are viewed as conducive to corruption, and a second type (I can't remember if she has a specific term for it, but I'd call it something like "transactional") that focuses more on identifying and punishing ex post specific corrupt acts, with "corrupt" being narrowly defined as an explicit quid pro quo. The American founders were fairly radically focused on prophylactic rules, largely in reaction to what they saw as a corrupt European political culture. This tradition carried well into the twentieth century. During this phase of jurisprudence, lobbying was seen as prima facie corrupt, similar to the act of selling your vote. (This is an interesting analogy that she raises; similar to voting, every citizen has a right to represent his or her interests in front of elected officials, but cannot sell that activity and represent the interests of another.) Over the late twentieth century, the trend of jurisprudence changed somewhat abruptly. She largely traces the change to Buckley v. Valeo, a 1976 case that struck down campaign finance limits as unconstitutional. Since then, prophylactic laws have generally been struck down as unjustified restrictions on free speech, and the court has focused on whether any specific quid pro quo can be proven. Of course, this means that effectively corruption law is dead, because anyone with half a brain can get a deal done without leaving any specific evidence of quid pro quo--and furthermore, influence peddling encompasses a lot more than QPQ. ZT gives some thoughts on why recent cases departed so abruptly from tradition, although you get the sense that she is as puzzled by it as anyone else. Two key items she points to are the rise of "law and economics" scholarship, which encourages a focus on identifiable transactions, and the shift in composition of the court towards academics and career judges (where previously, for example, many former elected officials served as justices)--people who may not have as good of a feel for how influence trading actually works in a legislative body.

Bernie Sanders is supporting Teachout's run for Congress, and it's easy to see why. The issue of Clinton's unreleased Goldman Sachs speeches (and associated paydays), for example, is right in the wheelhouse of the understanding of corruption put forward in this book. During the Democratic debates, Clinton would defend herself by saying, "Show me one instance when I changed my vote on financial regulation because of a donation!" This line of argument more or less exactly echoes the very narrow view of corruption that Teachout describes as taking hold in the latter twentieth century, and is totally divorced from the broader and, I think Teachout argues convincingly, the more appropriate conception upheld throughout most of American history.

[Jared · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Corruption, in the American tradition, does not just include blatant bribes and theft from the public till, but encompasses many situations where politicians and public institutions serve private interests at the public’s expense."

OBJECTIVES OF THE BOOK
- The book challenges four commonly held misconceptions: that corruption law began in the post-Watergate era, that criminal bribery law is the dominant sphere in which corruption law plays out, that bribery law is coherent and consistent, and that quid pro quo is the heart of corruption law.

AMERICAN TRADITION OF OPPOSING CORRUPTING PRACTICES
- The Articles of Confederation included this provision: “Nor shall any person holding any office of profit or trust under the United States, or any of them, accept any present, emolument, office or title of any kind.”

- Disappointed with Britain and Europe, Americans felt the need to constitute a political society with civic virtues and a deep commitment to representative responsiveness at the core. They enlisted law to help them do it, reclassifying noncorrupt, normal behaviors from Europe as corrupt behaviors in America.

- To quote James Madison, “My wish is that the national legislature be as uncorrupt as possible.”

- The work that it took to change a culture highlights the strain of a country attempting to reject old traditions and replace them with their own, and to declare unconstitutional that which was only recently “good diplomacy.”

FOUNDERS SAW LESSONS FROM THE DISTANT AND RECENT PAST
- The Americans read the story of Rome as a direct analogy to the corruption in the British Empire and a caution for the future.

- The king used wealth and patronage to gain influence over British parliamentarians, undermining constitutional government.

- the framers were “perpetually threatened by corruption.” Corruption fears—fears of a “conspiracy against liberty … nourished by corruption” “lay at the heart of Revolutionary movement.”

CONCEPTUAL PILLARS FOR FOUNDERS
- Early American conceptions of what corruption meant flowed from two related but distinct sources:

- The first was Aristotelian and republican, embodied in the thinking of the French political philosopher Baron de Montesquieu;

- the second was Christian, puritanical, and intertwined with theories of natural law, embodied in the theories of the English philosopher John Locke. In both traditions, the core metaphor of corruption was organic and derived from disease and internal collapse.

WELL, MAYBE NOT AS OPPOSED TO GIFTS AS SOME...
- Plato had been rather severe about gifts. Not only did he recommend dishonor for judges who were bribed by flattery, but he thought that public servants who accepted gifts should die:

GIFTS GIVEN TO AMERICAN DIPLOMATS
- Expensive gifts—sometimes called presents du roi or presents du congé—functioned as “tokens of esteem, prestige items, and perhaps petty bribes,” and were embedded in the culture of international relations.

- The king’s gift [to Ben Franklin and to others] threatened this kind of corruption because it encouraged a positive tacit relationship between France and Franklin, built on diamonds. This could interfere with Franklin’s obligations to the country at large.

- we expect that gifts lead to some warmth and generosity toward the giver, if not official favors.

- The snuff box incident demonstrated the belief that temptation and influence work in indirect ways, and that corruption is not merely transactional, or “quid pro quo,” as it is sometimes called.

AMERICAN POSITION (ESPECIALLY ON SUPREME COURT) HAS SHIFTED OVER TIME
- This new legal order treats corruption lightly and in a limited way. It narrows the scope of what is considered corruption to explicit deals. It reclassifies influence-seeking as normal and desirable political behavior.

- The a-historical—and potentially tragic—mistake made by the Kennedy-Roberts model flows in part from a modern tendency to look at political-legal problems through the lens of the First Amendment, and in part from a belief that the corrupting influence of money is moot because everyone in politics is already on the take.

- The Court has become populated by academics and appellate court justices, and not by people with experience of power and politics, who understand the ways in which real problems of money and influence manifest themselves. The lack of experience is compounded by a tendency to decide cases without full factual development.

WHAT IS CORRUPTION?
- Like liberty, speech, or equality, corruption is an important concept with unclear boundaries. It refers to excessive private interests in the public sphere; an act is corrupt when private interests trump public ones in the exercise of public power, and a person is corrupt when they use public power for their own ends, disregarding others.

CORRUPTION IS HARD TO EXTINGUISH BUT...
- In short, we have two thoughts: (1) men are not always angels, and therefore structures must help us; and (2) virtue is necessary, and structures alone cannot help us.

- Corruption cannot be made to vanish, but its power can be subdued with the right combination of culture and political rules.

WHAT IS AT STAKE?
- What America now faces, if we do not change the fundamental structures of the relationship of money to legislative power, is neither mob rule nor democracy, but oligarchy.

***

MAJOR NINETEENTH- and TWENTIETH-CENTURY ANTICORRUPTION LAWS

- MAIL FRAUD ACT (1872). Covered state and federal officials, criminalized the use of the mails for fraud, including, controversially, defrauding the public. Interpreted in 1927 to criminalize the theft of honest services.

- TILLMAN ACT (1907). Prohibited corporations from contributing money to federal campaigns. In the 1920s, in response to the Teapot Dome scandal, Congress passed laws requiring disclosure to enable enforcement of the corporate contribution laws.

- HATCH ACT (1939). Enacted regulation of primaries by Congress. Limited contributions and expenditures in congressional elections. Prohibited all federal employees from soliciting campaign contributions. Amended in 1940 to place limits on how much an individual could give to a candidate and a limit on how much a national party committee could spend. After the Hatch Act, total campaign spending dipped and did not reach 1936 levels until nearly a quarter century later.

- HOBBS ACT (1946). Covered state and federal officials, controversially held to criminalize the use of an official position to extort funds.

- TAFT-HARTLEY ACT (1947). Barred both labor unions and corporations from making expenditures and contributions in federal elections.

- FEDERAL BRIBERY STATUTE AND FEDERAL GRATUITIES STATUTE (1962). Covered federal officials and criminalized the giving or receiving of something of value in exchange for official action or as a reward for prior official action.

- FEDERAL ELECTION CAMPAIGN ACT (1974). Covered federal candidates, limited expenditures (struck down) and contributions around elections, and created public funding system for presidential elections.

- FEDERAL PROGRAM BRIBERY STATUTE (1984). Criminalized bribery of state and local officials explicitly.

- BIPARTISAN CAMPAIGN REFORM ACT (2002). Prohibited national political party committees from raising or spending funds not subject to federal limits. Definined “electioneering communications” as broadcast ads that name a federal candidate within thirty days of a primary or caucus or within sixty days of a general election.

***

BONUS

Citizens United v FEC court case explained: http://youtu.be/4J5Zx5YotBU

Article on Ben Franklin snuff box and Trump emoluments:
- https://timeline.com/benjamin-frankli...

Video on political thought of Montesquieu:
- http://youtu.be/x8QaGc-vpcU

Video on political thought of Hobbes:
- http://youtu.be/9i4jb5XBX5s

Video on political thought of Locke:
- http://youtu.be/bZiWZJgJT7I

Movies about corruption:
'Mr Smith Goes To Washington':
- http://youtu.be/PuUhDTaexHU

'The Leviathan' (2014 Russian film)
- http://youtu.be/tj0SMgg9Jqg

[Richard Evert · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very interesting book that I wish were a bit better written. Teachout has some difficulty in summarizing the key facts of certain legal cases, i.e., in giving enough background to make the legal point clear.

But her ideas are extremely important. Almost every commentator agrees that Citizens United was wrongly decided. Most critiques focus on the Court's notion of corporations as people and/or on its acceptance of the idea (from the 1974 decision in Buckley v. Valeo) that spending money to publicize one's view = speech protected by the First Amendment. Teachout, however, condemns the Court's narrow view of corruption.

Citizens United basically says: Corporate spending for political messages is speech protected by the First Amendment. The First Amendment can be overridden by Congress only for a highly compelling governmental interest. In this case the asserted governmental interest in limiting corporate spending was to curb corruption. But the Court found that interest to be insufficient to overcome the First Amendment concerns. According to the Court, there is no evidence that limiting corporate spending impedes corruption.

Teachout focuses on the Court's very narrow understanding of corruption: actual quid pro quo bribery. She then argues persuasively that through most American history activities such as lobbying were considered corrupt. She discusses the 1789 constitutional debates and their grounding in of Montesquieu's view of civic virtue.

Limits on campaign contributions and "dark money" and all of it, she argues, is completely consistent with the Framers' concern that Congress shield itself from the temptation of corruption and undue influence. And those concerns, she argues, go to the heart of our representative government and clearly overrride First Amendment strictures.

[Gordon · Rating 4 out of 5]

With the increasingly precious definition of corruption as offered by the Roberts' Court, this book offers a heartfelt plea for a belief in the value of selflessness on the part of the state and on the part of its citizens. With the dulcet tones of Reagan still echoing in my ears as he told our country that government was not a solution, it was the problem, and the encouragement of cyphers who believe in the half-baked selfishness of Ayn Rand, I had almost begun to think that I was outmoded and beside the point. Certainly the latest election demonstrates how little the American people want to take responsibility for making the lives of its citizenry better. The general thinking is more guns, fewer commitments. Pay everything to build engines of destruction while paying as little as possible to feed children and the poor or old. This book talks about the extensive definition of corruption that the framers of the constitution believed in, the corruption in England and France that they feared occurring in their new nation, and the various assaults on our democracy over the Nation's history from the snuffbox (portrait box) that Franklin got from Louis XV (and had to ask for permission from Congress to keep it) to the various theft of service that now occurs. This book's first and last chapters will offer the threat of Citizens United and the reason why we should fight against the latest corrupt Supreme Court. It's good to read a moral lesson. Some humor, a lot of research. Tough sledding in places but worth it.

[Fraser Kinnear · Rating 4 out of 5]

Creating laws that deter bribery of legislators, but do not democratic organizing, has been among the most vexing problems of the American political experiment. To put another way, Democracy's internal threat: responsiveness to donors, is deeply intertwined with Democracy's greatest promise: responsiveness to citizens.

The Supreme Court decision in Citizen's united decision made the claim that uncoordinated corporate spending was not corrupting of politicians because the majority (Kennedy, Roberts, Scalia, et al.) limited the definition of corruption to quid-pro-quo, instead of less direct influence.

Citizens United is a complicated opinion, with many moving parts. But to my mind, the radicalism of the opinion, even beyond the flawed framework of Buckley, rests on two connected determinations. First, the Court found that the First Amendment protects political speech regardless of the identity of the speaker. Second, the Court found that no sufficiently important countervailing governmental or constitutional goal was served by limiting corporate political advertising. It conclusively held that corruption was the only possible government interest that might permit First Amendment restrictions and that anticorruption interests were not served by the law. Political equality concerns are not constitutionally legitimate reasons to pass such a law.

The opinion comprehensively redefined corruption, and in so doing, redefined the rules governing political life in the United States. As a matter of federal constitutional law, corruption now means only “quid pro quo corruption.” And quid pro quo exists only when there are “direct examples of votes being exchanged for . . . expenditures.” Corruption does not include undue influence and cannot flow from donors trying to influence policy through campaign contributions, unless these donors are utterly crass. “Ingratiation and access” are not corruption. Corruption does not include “the corrosive and distorting effects of immense aggregations of wealth that are accumulated with the help of the corporate form and that have little or no correlation to the public’s support for the corporation’s political ideas.” And perhaps as surprisingly, Kennedy held that as a matter of law— regardless of the facts that are presented—“independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.

Much of Teachout's book provides the historical legal context over how Americans understood corruption, from the Founding Fathers to Citizens United. She draws a steady erosion of values from a very stringent, principles-based approach to today's very loose definition.

How does Teachout define corruption?

"An act is corrupt if when private interests trump public ones in the exercise of public power. And a person is corrupt when they use public power for their own ends, disregarding others... The book challenges four commonly held misconceptions: 1) That corruption began in the post-Watergate era, 2) That criminal bribery law is the dominant sphere in which corruption law plays out, 3) That bribery law is coherent and consistent, and 4) that quid-pro-quo is the heart of corruption law"

Teachout emphasizes how concerned the founding fathers were with matters of corruption, when laying out the Articles of Confederation and then the US Constitution (the word corruption appeared hundreds of times in the convention and ratification debates, with only a few of those instances referring to quid pro quo). Some of their specific concerns include those that we have given up on today, such as representatives entering lobbying after public service. They called this the "Problem of Placement", which is why we have congress approving Presidental appointments. Today, >50% of congressmen go into lobbying after public service.

Their reference point was England, which was perceived to be hopelessly corrupt at the time, due to patronage from the Crown. There's some interesting political philosophy tangents, including the argument between Hobbes and Montesquieu over human nature in politics, and how that was interpretated in the Federalist Papers. Teachout summarizes Madison in Federalist No. 51 as:

"In short, we have two thoughts: (1) men are not always angels, and therefore structures must help us; and (2) virtue is necessary, and structures alone cannot help us. THe reconciliation between these two Madisonian beliefs holds the key to understanding the moral psychology of most of the framers. These can both be true if one perceives a dynamic relationship between constitutional struture and political morality... corruption cannot be made to vanish, but its power can be subdued with the right combination of culture and political rules".

I suppose today this is perceived as too wishy-washy, as we are more focused on a rules-based approach than a principles one. This is a long-standing debate that exists in the world of accounting. Teachout focuses on it, because she believes that our country has seen a slide away from principles in jurisprudence, which doesn't work well for opaque problems like corruption.

Beyond campaign finance, Teachout also explains the insidious growth and acceptance of the lobbying industry through US history.

The old law of lobbying changed in three steps. First, state courts recording lobby contracts as contracts for professional instead of personal influcence as a general matter. Instead of default suspcicion, they defaulted toward assuming lobbying contracts were legitimate. Second, judges changed their attitudes toward contracts. While nineteenth-century judges saw themselves a providding public subsidies that out not be used for activities that were against public policy, twentieth-century courts saw themselves as neutral arbiters, agnistic as to the content of contracts, responsible only for a technical, not moral, review. The third step involved a changing view of the First Amendment, as the Supreme Court gained prominence in the political vision of the mid-twentieth-century justices.

Teachout doesn't spend as much time describing solutions, but does provide a few. Maybe the most important being more stringent, clear "bright line" rules over what can be allowed in political campaigning and the career tracks of public servents. There's a load of clever ideas out there (my favorites are from Larry Lessig).

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Teachout is a professor of law and a politician. Her book is a scholarly look at the concept of corruption in America and the evolution of laws to prevent corruption in our government. She argues forcefully that much of the U.S. Constitution is an exercise in preventing corruption. She notes that recent Supreme Court rulings, especially Citizens United, has narrowed the definition of corruption to only quid quo pro, much more limited than the Founders intended. The book concludes with several realistic laws that could be enacted, even under Citizens United, that would help prevent the type of corruption envisioned by the Founders. Teachout is highly critical of the Court - current and going back to the early 70s - describing the motivations behind the Court's corruption case rulings. Being that book it dense, one is fighting to put it down. Stick with it.

[Jason Coleman · Rating 2 out of 5]

Important piece of writing, but its 90% about the history of corruption dating back mostly to the era of the founding fathers and only about 10% of current politics: Citizens United, Buckley v. Valeo, etc. I think Lawrence Lessig's book, Republic Lost, is much better if you are interested in corruption in current politics.

[Muath Aziz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Law, History, Politics, America, the book got all that! The book is really comprehensive and to the point, no useless historical facts like what you usually see in some books.

The book is accessible and for everyone interested in politics and not just for specialists.

[Steven Meyers · Rating 3 out of 5]

The colorful Supreme Court Justice, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., stated, "The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience... The law embodies the story of a nation's development through many centuries, and it cannot be dealt with as if it contained only the axioms and corollaries of a book of mathematics." Ms. Teachout argues in 'Corruption in America' that the conservative wing of the Supreme Court has lost sight of the Founding Fathers' wanting to minimize corruption in our democracy. They were not foolish enough to believe that it would ever be eliminated, but tried to install laws which would allow democracy to survive and not evolve into a plutocracy. Ms. Teachout explains how the Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United has accelerated our path towards a government catering only towards the rich.

The author's book is academic in its delivery but avoids burdening the work with unnecessary ostentatious words. However, the book is constructed in a manner where it’s important for the reader to carefully follow along with her presentation. The law professor walks you through our country's history of dealing with corruption in public institutions. It focuses on both the federal and state actions. 'Corruption in America' also shows how there is no clear-cut definition of corruption. She posits questions in the cases reviewed that left me stumped as to a resolution. The book covers such issues as who influenced the Founding Fathers' thinking when creating the Constitution, the laws constant struggles in dealing with what defines bribery and extortion, the concerns of the judiciary usurping the legislative role, lobbying, the spoils system, when are campaign contributions corrupt, the conservative's law and economic movement, the commitment to civic virtue, and the moral versus legal perspectives in addressing corruption. Much of what is addressed in the book are not black-and-white issues. The book concludes with suggestions by Ms. Teachout on how to get back on track in preventing our country from devolving into a plutocracy. The two Appendix chapters (Anticorruption Constitutional Provisions, Major Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Anticorruption Laws) were also helpful.

'Corruption in America' is not a collection of stories about corruption. Ms. Teachout's work is about challenging the current conservative judges who view the First Amendment as the trump card in the Constitution. Our Founding Fathers were very concerned with corruption because of what they studied from history as well as what was occurring in England. Many Americans foolish believe our democracy is indestructible, that we are incapable of evolving into a society tailored strictly for the rich and elite because of corruption. 'Corruption in America' was published in 2014, before Trump became president. If the GOP 2017 Tax Bill rammed through the Congress and signed by President Foghorn Leghorn because of pressure by their rich contributors, despite an overwhelming objection by the public, is not a clear sign of corruption and plutocracy, then I'm the friggin' Queen of England. Ms. Teachout's book was interesting but somewhat dry in presentation.

[R. · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book's alternate title dancing through my head the entire way through it was "A history of how Capitalism is tearing down and destroying Democracy, even as you read this book." Now, that's not a bad thing. It needs to be said. Capitalism left unchecked will always win over morals and ideals. The times that doesn't happen is when your ideals are protected by incorruptible men and women and we certainly haven't had that happen in this country in my lifetime. Well, unless you count Bernie Sanders.

“The two national powers that dominated the colonies, France and Britain, represented two different models of corruption. Britain was seen as a failed ideal. It was corrupted republic, a place where the premise of government was basically sound but civic virtue—that of the public and public officials—was degenerating. On the other hand, France was seen as more essentially corrupt, a nation in which there was no true polity, but instead exchanges of luxury for power; a nation populated by weak subjects and flattering courtiers. Britain was the greater tragedy, because it held the promise of integrity, whereas France was simply something of a civic cesspool.”

That's an interesting assessment above. It's no doubt true that the founders thought largely along those lines. My own reading in history would tend to support that. That doesn't mean their belief was largely true. In fact, I would say it's incredibly biased and certainly could not have had anything to do with the fact that most of the founders were of British descent. (Can you sense the sarcasm in my sentence?)

The writer does a great job of pointing out the slide in our definitions of corruption over time. The founders had a very broad definition of corruption and threw the book at people. Good for them. Now, we have a very narrow definition of corruption and democracy is more or less a sham ever since Citizens United. We're basically waiting until things are bad enough there are enough people angry enough to do something about it which could be another couple decades, but the existing system cannot work forever and I think most people would agree with that. Somethings gotta give eventually.

“Like liberty, speech, or equality, corruption is an important concept with unclear boundaries. It refers to excessive private interests in the public sphere; an act is corrupt when private interests trump public ones in the exercise of public power, and a person is corrupt when they use public power for their own ends, disregarding others.”

I did not like how dry the material sometimes seemed so I dinged it a star for that. It was pretty heavy reading. Lots of court cases, legal opinions, legal summaries, etc. My personal preference is for exciting reading, but I get that not everything can be. Alas, such is life.

[Pamela Wilbur · Rating 5 out of 5]

"There is a long American tradition of suspicion of concentrated economic power because of its tendency to corrupt government and turn it from a democracy into a plutocracy." [Run by the wealthy]
.........
"As of 2014 most of the markets for essential goods are governed by monopolies. Retail is governed by Walmart and Amazon; cable by Comcast; finance by 4 banks; meat by 4 companies. These minigovernments then use their economic power to exercise direct political power."

So, what the heck happened??

Zephyr Teachout maps out the descent of the protection from corruption, case by case and decision by decision, and how it creeped into our politics, in spite of the attempts by the framers of the constitution to avoid the disasters of European governments. America has been a unique, genius experiment where the government is run by the people, for the people. But we need to preserve this before we lose it. She explains how we got to a state of politics where the wealthy rule. Initially, with the fresh revolution, there was super vigilance against the corrupting power of money. But, "In 1970 only 3% of senators and congresspeople leaving office became lobbyists; now over 50% do, and the numbers are growing." "The founders' fears that legislators would go into public office in order to get a job became realized when lobbyists started hiring over half the members of Congress and many of their staffers after they left office."

The case of Citizens United gave unlimited power of money into politics, a major blow to democracy. "Citizens United changed the culture at the same time that it changed the law. It reframed that which was unpatriotic and named it patriotic." There was no longer a limit on personal influence. Money buys the outcome. We stopped trusting our government. We all lose.

Two things, though, can save our unique America:
1) Publicly financed campaigns. Level ground for everyone. Remove the corruption of money. Let normal people get in there! Zephyr is actively promoting this in New York and we should support this important effort.
2) Trust-busting. Breaking up the monopolies. "A return to traditional ideas of political antitrust, strengthened by new laws, would make combination for the sake of concentrating political power more difficult." Basically, don't allow any companies to eat up the rest to gain all the power. This requires rules, and rules that encourage healthy competition, addressing the peril of too much power.

[Elizabeth Burton · Rating 4 out of 5]

It would be soothing to think there's no corollation between the embrace of neoliberal free-market capitalism in the 1970s and the coincident evolution of SCOTUS decisions undermining every effort to control the de facto corruption arising from allowing unlimited campaign donations, but I have never been a believer in coincidence.

I confess I had forgotten buying this book when it was originally published then tucking it away on a shelf only to be recently rediscovered. Still, again denying the existence of coincidence, I was much better prepared to read it now than I would have been then.

This is a book written by a scholar and academic, so it can be tough going at times for non-poli-sci majors. It's also very timely given complaints are already arising that the latest bill introduced in Congress to protect voting rights doesn't address ethics. My sense is that may be wise. We desperately need voter protections, and based on those last 50 years including the ethics issue in a law it's inevitable will be brought before the Roberts court, omitting something the SCOTUS would be almost certain to shut down seems the better strategy.

If you're like me, and prefer to know why and how things happen, I can recommend Dr. Teachout's excellent, if somewhat densely packed, review of the history of corruption law in the US without reservation.

[Doug Hughes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Zephyr Teachout makes a convincing argument using the lens of legal history from the time the United States was founded until the year her book was published. (2014) The author does what any great historian does - she makes the events interesting and relatable.

Chronologically, the mosaic emerges - the founders were explicit in their opposition to the federal government being corrupted by bribes, in any form. The objective, defined in the US Constitution, and supported by dozens of legal precedents, establishes the philosophy that our elected officials should not be influenced by wealth or by the temptation of future wealth in the decisions they make - decisions which should have the sole objective of benefitting the people, not the elected official(s).

It's a relatively recent idea and terribly wrong that only a quid-pro-quo bribe improperly influences an official. The pinnacle of judicial idiocy is in the Citizens-United decision but the US Supreme Court which allows unlimited corporate investments in elections.

The structure of future reform may best be designed around the template of previous correct rulings.

[Leigh · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just finished Corruption in America : From Benjamin Franklin’s Snuff Box to Citizens United. It’s very enlightening on how corruption and bribery laws have been twisted and made meaningless since about the early 1970s. This line, written about members of the US Supreme Court, made me think of many people - “One model that law and economics scholars regularly use is the selfish man…they default to a presumption of egoism. Citizens are modelled as self-interest maximizing, and people primarily conceived of as consumers rather than citizens” (Teachout 260-261).

This new conception of the law and citizenship is pushed by the Federalist Society, a conservative law association that pushes these new “law and economics” principles. Five members of the US Supreme Court are members.

The author is a Law Professor, so it can get a bit technical, but except for a couple of passages it’s very readable.

[Kenneth Chanko · Rating 3 out of 5]

An essential book for our corrupt political times. I'm guessing much of what Teachout discusses in this sobering survey will be even more front-and-center starting early next year, assuming the Dems take the House next month, given that corruption investigations of Trump and his administration will be highly likely throughout 2019. Indeed, swamp-draining might finally be on tap, though not in the way our ConMan-in-Chief cynically seeks to define it.

The only reason I didn't give this 4 stars is that I found a good chunk of it heavy with drier textbook-style case law. But folks can easily enough breeze over some of the more lawyerly stuff, as I did.

Last but not least: It's too bad Teachout didn't win the Dem primary back in September; she would've made a top-notch AG for my home state of NY.

[Miguel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Teachout’s book on Corruption is much more scholarly than anticipated – that’s not a knock on it at all – but I had thought that this was going to take a more populist view of recent corruption in the US. Instead it was a look back from the founding and how influential thinkers on the topic like Montesquieu influenced the framers, and then it goes into historical case law to further flesh out the history and background building up to modern times. Not going to lie – this wasn’t the most engaging of reads especially in the middle section, unless of course one is excited by 19th century supreme court cases. Towards the end she culminates in the travesty that is Citizens United and how that has been so poisonous to the body politic. Still, glad that I listened in and looking forward to her upcoming book later this year.

[Gretchen Neuman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Want to know what a snuff box has to do with Donald Trump's impeachment? Just want to know what snuff is? Never really understood the term "emolument" when it was being thrown around last year? You will get the answer to most of those questions with this book.

Zephyr Teachout is a professor. That comes through. Parts of this book are a slog of trying to understand the 18th-century commentary. But it all comes down to this:

If you want to feel better for supporting Trump impeachment and its connection to the concerns of our founding fathers? This book is for you. If you want to be able to show that the impeachment was a hoax? Go back to reading children's books written by Newt Gingrich.

[Deb Van Iderstine · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not entirely sure what I expected from this book, and perhaps the frequently sleep-inducing delivery of the audio book's reader has overly influenced my rating. It is very concerned with the legal definition of corruption, and therefore sometimes seems closer to a legal textbook than a history. (Of course, never having attended law school, I don't really have a basis for comparison.) I may return to the text version at some point in the future, reality permitting. The best chapter for me was the one dealing with the Citizens United ruling, not too surprisingly, as both the most recent and familiar of the cases cited.