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107 Nw. L. Rev. Colloquy 1 (2012-2013)

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Copyright 2012 by Northwestern University School of Law                Vol. 107
Northwestern University Law Review Colloquy

CITIZENS UNITED AND THE SCOPE OF PROFESSOR

      TEACHOUT'S ANTI-CORRUPTION PRINCIPLE


                                                       Seth Barrett Tillman*


        Actually stable laws require a stable vocabulary .... Thus
        the magistrates of a state have a duty to see that names are
        not irresponsibly changed.
        -Richard M. Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences (1948)**

        The Constitution was intended to provide structural en-
        couragements to keep the logic and language of society as a
        whole from becoming corrupt, representing a technical and
        moral response to what they saw as a technical and moral
        problem.
        -Zephyr      Teachout,    The   Anti-Corruption    Principle
        (2009)*

                          I.   WHY THIS COLLOQUY?
     The test of great scholarship is whether it changes the way people think
and the way people live. That is also true for legal academic scholarship.
But, for legal academics, perhaps the greatest sign of scholarly achievement
is judicial reliance upon our craftsmanship. By any measure, Professor
Teachout's 2009 Cornell Law Review publication, The Anti-Corruption
Principle,1 is a success. In 2010, one short year after publication, The Anti-
Corruption Principle was relied upon by Justice Stevens in his Citizens
United v. Federal Elections Commission dissent,2 just as it was cited, disap-
provingly, by Justice Scalia in his concurrence.3 If that was not enough of
an accomplishment, The Anti-Corruption Principle has also been cited in

   * Lecturer of Law, National University of Ireland Maynooth. Preferred Citation Format: Seth Bar-
rett Tillman, Citizens United and the Scope of Professor Teachout's Anti-Corruption Principle, 107 Nw.
U. L. REV. COLLOQUY 1 (2012). I thank: Professors Robert W. Bennett, Aaron-Andrew P. Bruhl, David
M. Driesen, Brian C. Kalt, Gary S. Lawson, John Manning, and Robert G. Natelson; Roy E. Brownell II,
Esq.; D. Fitzmaurice, S.P. Hickey; and the expert student-editors at Northwestern University Law Re-
view Colloquy. All errors remain mine.
   ** RICHARD M. WEAVER, IDEAS HAVE CONSEQUENCES 168 (1948) (emphasis added).
   *  Teachout, infra note 1, at 352 (emphasis added).
   Zephyr Teachout, The Anti-Corruption Principle, 94 CORNELL L. REV. 341 (2009) (link).
   2 See Citizens United v. FEC, 130 S. Ct. 876, 948 n.51, 963-4 (2010) (Stevens, J., concurring in
part and dissenting in part) (link); cf W. Tradition P'ship, Inc. v. Att'y Gen., 271 P.3d 1,   131
(Mont. 2011) (Nelson, J., dissenting) (citing Teachout) (link).
   3 See Citizens United, 130 S. Ct. at 928 (Scalia, J., concurring).

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