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77 Baylor L. Rev. 1 (2025)

handle is hein.journals/baylr77 and id is 1 raw text is: CORRUPTION AS CONTRACT: TAKING QUID PRO QUo SERIOUSLY Adam Wright* The law of criminal political corruption centers on an idea that appears nowhere in thefederal criminal code: quidpro quo. This term is as pervasive as it is misunderstood. Over the last several decades, courts have converged around the application of a quid pro quo requirement in order to limit the reach of broadfederal criminal statutes prohibiting bribery, gratuity, fraud, extortion . The Supreme Court's recent decision in Snyder v. United States culminates the process ofusing quidpro quo to narrow the crimes ofpolitical corruption. This Article examines the role ofquidpro quo in thefour most commonly prosecuted anti-corruption criminal statutes: federal official bribery, Hobbs Act extortion under color of official right, honest services mail and wire fraud, and federal programs bribery. After examining how courts have defined the quid, the pro, and the quo for each statute, this Article turns to the law of contract in order to interpret what is, after all, a contractual term. Viewing corruption through the lens of contract, this Article argues that an illegal quid pro quo occurs in one of two forms: as a corrupt promise or a corrupt agreement. The Article then applies this approach to two pressing questions regarding the criminal law of corruption. First, it shows how a contractual approach best explains Snyder, which recently eliminated the theory of gratuity liability in the federal anti-corruption statute applicable to millions of state and local officials. Second, this Article suggests how a contractual framework may help defend broader theories of criminal corruption, including stream ofbenefits bribery. By clarifying the role ofquidpro quo * Visiting Assistant Professor of Law, University of Detroit Mercy School of Law. Many thanks to the faculty of the University of Detroit Mercy Law School, as well as fellow participants in the White Collar Crime panel at the Southeastern Association of Law Schools, for their invaluable insights. I am also thankful to Connor Pearson for his exceptional research assistance and to the editors of the Baylor-Law Review for their discerning suggestions. Most of all, I am grateful to my wife, who supported me through this process and endured more than her fair share of stories about quidpro quo.

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