ABSTRACT
The Tillman Act of 1907 was named after populist Senator Benjamin R. Tillman, commonly referred to as "Pitchfork Ben." As a southern agrarian, he was highly suspicious of industrial power and attacked President Theodore Roosevelt for accepting corporate contributions in 1904 despite the president's trust-busting reputation. The Tillman Act arguably had implications for civil liberties because it extended a degree of constitutional rights to corporations. Federal courts will almost certainly continue to grapple with determining how corporate campaign finance activities can be regulated in the aftermath of the passage of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, popularly known as McCain-Feingold. The Supreme Court reiterated the equation of money with speech in Buckley v. Valeo, 424 US 1, which upheld most of the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1974, but struck down limits on campaign expenditures and how much one could spend on one's own campaign.
