William L. Kovacs

August 24, 2026

Part IV: Using AI Statistics to Prove Corporate Money Corrupts Politics

After 140 years of Supreme Court holdings recognizing corporations’ constitutional rights, there appears to be no simple remedy for balancing the use of massive corporate resources to control the political system with the protection of citizens’ rights in a democracy. Specifically, possessing personhood grants corporations constitutional rights.

The Supreme Court does not even believe that independent expenditures lead to corruption or the appearance of corruption; therefore, it permits unlimited money in politics. Under the Court’s decisions, the only permissible rationale for limiting campaign spending is to prevent quid pro quo corruption, which refers to outright bribery, an action already prohibited by statute.

Traditional mechanisms for overturning Citizens United are unlikely to prevail. A new approach is required. Artificial Intelligence (AI) may be able to generate the statistical evidence required to establish that massive amounts of corporate money in politics corrupts Congress and its policy making process.

Why do the traditional approaches to taking money out of politics fail?

A constitutional amendment could expressly provide that the constitutional rights of natural persons do not automatically extend to corporations. This sledgehammer approach would likely interfere with the legal protections corporations need to operate. Such an amendment would need careful drafting to avoid endangering freedom of the press, religious institutions, nonprofit associations, and the property and due process protections on which all organizations depend.

The Supreme Court could reconsider Citizens United or recognize a broader governmental interest in protecting the integrity of representative government from concentrated economic power. That appears unlikely under the Court’s present doctrine, which has increasingly limited campaign-finance regulation to measures directed at quid pro quo corruption or its appearance.

States might seek to place political-spending limitations or shareholder-approval requirements in corporate law. Yet direct prohibitions would face serious First Amendment challenges under existing precedent. More defensible state reforms would require meaningful shareholder approval, disclosure of political expenditures, or corporate governance procedures that ensure executives do not use other people’s invested capital for undisclosed political purposes.

Congress could also require prompt and comprehensive disclosure of political spending. Disclosure does not answer whether corporations should possess the constitutional right to contribute unlimited amounts of money to influence elections. Still, it at least allows citizens to identify the economic interests attempting to influence their votes and their government.

AI, with its power to quickly analyze massive amounts of data, may be able to establish the direct link between corporate contributions and congressional policies, thereby providing evidence of institutional corruption.

If large political expenditures consistently produce subsidies, tax preferences, favorable regulation, government contracts, or lax enforcement for the big corporate spenders, the distinction between independent political advocacy and the purchase of governmental policies becomes increasingly difficult to sustain. Unlike quid pro quo bribery involving individual members of Congress, the AI statistical approach seeks to analyze how massive amounts of money corrupt the entire congressional policy making process. These findings may be sufficient for the Supreme Court to protect democracy over corporate rights.

Modern data analysis using AI seeks to find correlations between political spending, official conduct, and government benefits on a scale previously impossible to calculate. A study by Professors Martin Gilens (UCLA) and Benjamin I. Page (Northwestern University), published by Cambridge University, is the first roadmap for building a statistical foundation for determining the corporate benefits of massive political contributions.

In “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens,” the two authors reviewed 1,779 unique data sets to determine who influences policy in the U.S. Their key finding is that the economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantially more impact on U.S. policy compared to average citizens, who the study finds have near-zero influence. Moreover, because of the strong status quo built into the U.S. Political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it, unless the elites also seek the same changes.

The term “data set” refers to the author’s empirical effort to compile data generated over many years to estimate the influence on public policy of “affluent citizens, poor citizens, and those in the middle of the income distribution.” The surveys asked participants whether they favored or opposed specific policy options based on the policy’s specificity, its relevance to the federal government, and participants’ income levels. It also included research by other colleagues on interest groups active on those issues and the magnitude of resources deployed to influence the problem.

AI gives citizens the computing power to uncover evidence that political contributions skew policy making in corporations’ favor. Simply, it could statistically link how political contributions buy beneficial corporate policy and benefits. The focus is not on money-to-member corruption, but on something more significant: money-to-Congress to purchase policy. The statistics may show that massive amounts of money are corrupting the entire institution of Congress.

The Constitution begins with “We the People,” not “We the Corporations.” If artificial entities possess constitutional political rights because courts gradually accepted them rather than because the constitutional text clearly grants them, the nation must ask what limiting principle remains.

Can entities created by state government acquire political rights beyond the federal government’s power to control? Can accumulated corporate capital constitutionally overwhelm the political voices of the citizens who must live with the results of the corruption? And at what point does protecting corporate speech diminish rather than preserve republican self-government?

Until those questions are answered, corporate personhood will remain what it is today: a powerful constitutional doctrine still searching for its constitutional foundation.

Corporate Personhood: Constitutional Doctrine Without Constitutional Text (Four Parts)

Part I: Can Artificial Entities Become Constitutional Persons?

Part II: Santa Clara: The Decision That Never Explained Itself

Part III: Citizens United and the Rise of Corporate Political Power

Part IV: Using AI Statistics to Prove Corporate Money Corrupts Politics

Part I: Can Artificial Entities Become Constitutional Persons?

William L. Kovacs served as senior vice president for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and chief counsel to a congressional committee. His books include: Congress: An Irrelevant Institution or Guardian of the Republic, Reform the Kakistocracy, the recipient of the 2021 Independent Press Award for Social/Political Change, and Devolution of Power. He can be contacted at [email protected]

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