Citizens United Charrette

Citizens United, Political Giving, and Nonprofit Personhood

Are Nonprofits People Too? This is the second of an ongoing series of small workshops that we are holding under the umbrella title, ReCoding Good, an initiative of the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society that aims to examine the changing landscape of how individuals deploy private resources for public benefit.

Jane Mayer of The New Yorker will be joining us. Her articles, Covert Operations and State for Sale, are attached to this email, as are several other key resources we hope you will read before we meet.

We will be considering the implications of Citizens United from a legal perspective as well as taking up questions about changes in money flows, the structure of the nonprofit sector, transparency, and the state of data on nonprofits. These questions and the reading for the discussion are attached.

Resources

Jane Mayer, "Covert Operations," The New Yorker, August 30, 2010

Jane Mayer, "State For Sale," The New Yorker, October 10, 2011

Larry Lessig, "Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress and a Plan to Stop it"

Two articles that argue the problem is not about "Corporate Personhood":

• Hager & Leas: Corporate personhood is not the problem with Citizens United
• Leas: Constitutional amendment not needed

Greg Colvin will attend this charrette. The following is a video of him speaking on this at Case Western, the text of the speech at CWU and an opinion piece he wrote.

• Video of Colvin on nonprofit law after CU from Case Western U
• Colvin’s comparison’s of constitutional amendments
• Political Tax Law After Citizens United: A Time For Reform (PDF)

We’re looking forward to a rich discussion of scholars, practitioners, and policymakers.