Business Ethics After Citizens United: A Contractualist Analysis David Silver Received: 23 September 2013 / Accepted: 27 December 2013 Ó Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014 Abstract In Citizens United v. Federal Election Com- mission (2010), the US Supreme Court sharply curtailed the ability of the state to limit political speech by for-profit corporations. This new legal situation elevates the question of corporate political involvement: in what manner and to what extent is it ethical for for-profit corporations to par- ticipate in the political process in a liberal democratic soci- ety? Using Scanlon’s version of contractualism, I argue for a number of substantive and procedural constraints on the political activities of businesses. Central to this contractu- alist analysis is (1) an identification of the self-governance- based interests of individuals that are affected by corporate political activity and (2) a method for judging the various assignments of social rights, duties and roles according to how they collectively meet those interests. Together, these two features make this contractualist approach distinctive and allow it to generate substantive ethical results. Keywords Business ethics Á Policy Á Contractualism In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010), the US Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional for the state to limit political speech by for-profit corporations that are acting independently of political candidates and parties. This new, expansive legal right for corporations elevates the already important question of corporate political involvement: in what manner and to what extent is it ethical for for-profit corporations to participate in the political process in a liberal democratic society? 1 This question lies at the intersection of political phi- losophy and business ethics. While there is no shortage of theoretical approaches on offer in these two fields, I address the question using Scanlon’s (1998) version of contractualism. It is beyond the scope of this paper either to fully defend contractualism as a general theory of ethics or as the appropriate theory to address political philosophy or business ethics in particular; however, one aim of this paper is to support contractualism by showing how it identifies morally relevant aspects of the question of cor- porate political involvement and provides a satisfactory framework for thinking about it. Central to this contractualist analysis is (1) an identifi- cation of the self-governance-based interests of individuals that are affected by corporate political activity and (2) a method for judging the various assignments of social rights, duties and roles according to how they collectively meet those interests. Together, these two features make the contractualist approach distinctive and allow it to generate substantive ethical results. I examine three sets of these self-governance-based interests that are affected by corporate political activity: one that underlies the right to private property; a second that underlies the moral case for a democratic form of governance; and a set of ‘‘associational interests’’ that people have with respect to the persons and organizations in their economic lives. I also consider individuals’ D. Silver (&) Chair in Business and Professional Ethics, W. Maurice Young Centre for Applied Ethics, The Sauder School of Business, The University of British Columbia, 6356–231 Agricultural Road, Vancouver, BC V6T1Z2, Canada e-mail: david.silver@ubc.ca 1 Despite longstanding disagreements within democratic society about this question, the ‘‘business and corporate social responsibility literature contains little discussion of the ethics of business efforts to influence public policy decisions.’’ (Weber 1997, 73) Although Weber made this observation some time ago, the business ethics literature has given relatively little attention to this question. 123 J Bus Ethics DOI 10.1007/s10551-013-2046-y Downloaded from http://www.elearnica.ir