After the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010 opened the floodgates to corporate campaign donations, spending on judicial elections by outside groups skyrocketed. In the 2012 election cycle, independent spending was $24.1 million, compared with about $2.7 million spent in the 2001–02 election cycle, a ninefold increase. A 2013 study by Professor Joanna Shepherd of Emory University School of Law showed that the more donations justices receive from businesses, the more likely they are to rule in favor of business litigants.
