This article gives the best overview of the issues surrounding corporate personhood I have seen.
In 2009, Riki Ott was on the road for 252 days educating people about the dangers of “corporate personhood.” That’s the legal doctrine that says corporations have constitutional rights, just like human beings. She mostly spoke in academic settings, and there was some interest in the idea, says Ott, but not much.
All that changed on January 21, 2010, when the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Now interest has skyrocketed, and Ott finds people eager to volunteer, to organize, to meet, to do anything to reverse the Court’s decision.
Rallying Around Citizens United
Supreme Court cases are usually interesting to lawyers, scholars, and those directly affected. Occasionally, a decision makes the news for a few days before disappearing from the public eye. But sometimes there’s a game changer-a decision that is so clearly wrong that it becomes a rallying point. David Cobb, former Green Party presidential candidate and longtime activist on corporate personhood, points to Dred Scott v. Sandford as one such decision. Citizens United, Cobb says, is shaping up as another.
The two cases are mirror images of error. In 1857, the Dred Scott decision said that a flesh-and-blood human being had no constitutional rights because he was black. On January 21, 2010, the Court, in a 5-4 decision, used Citizens United to declare that corporations-legal entities with no human attributes-have the same constitutional free-speech rights that humans have.
Dred Scott was the most notorious Supreme Court decision of its time. It was not a groundbreaking case-it simply took existing law to its logical conclusion. But it so clearly violated both logic and human decency that it forced people to look at what slavery really meant. Rather than legitimizing the status quo, as it was intended to do, the decision galvanized the growing abolitionist movement, and set the stage for the end of slavery. But it took the 14th Amendment to overturn Dred Scott.
Citizens United also takes existing law to its logical conclusion. And, like Dred Scott, it is generating tremendous discussion and debate-this time about corporate power and about what role, if any, corporations should play in the political process.
An ABC News/Washington Post poll taken February 4-8, 2010, found that 80 percent of Americans oppose the Court’s ruling, including 65 percent who “strongly” oppose it. Opposition cuts across the political spectrum: 85 percent of Democrats oppose the ruling, as do 81 percent of Independents, and 76 percent of Republicans.
Within days of the Citizens United decision, groups formed to undo the Court’s damage. They are pursuing remedies ranging from local ordinances to federal legislation to a constitutional amendment.
Why Should We Care
Citizens United says that corporations can spend unlimited amounts of money on political advertising. The Court declared more than 30 years ago that spending money is a form of speech, and that corporations had a First Amendment right to speak that way. But there were still limits, particularly in the area of political speech, where there is a century-old tradition of controlling the influence of corporations on the electoral process.
Citizens United takes away those limits. According to the Court, if human beings are allowed an unrestricted right to free speech, then corporations must have the same right.
The Court overturned a key provision of the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance reform law that prohibited corporate- and union-funded campaign advertising within 90 days of a federal election. Now, corporations can spend unlimited money influencing our elections right up to Election Day.
More than $5 billion was spent on the 2008 campaigns with the McCain-Feingold law in place. If that seems like a lot of money, wait for the next election cycle. Citizens United was a case about a corporation spending money to advertise and air a movie that amounted to a hit piece on Hilary Clinton. There are now no limits on the funding of that sort of negative campaign material. Any candidate who doesn’t toe the corporate line can look forward to a flood of opposition cash.
The Humanity of Corporations
Just as Dred Scott was only an extension of existing law, Citizens United merely extends law that has been developing for a long time. But, like Dred Scott, the Court’s conclusion makes clear to most people that the law is wrong. To say that a corporation with billions to spend on advertising is no different from a human being with one voice and one vote goes beyond what a large majority of Americans are willing to accept.
But this is the logical conclusion of the doctrine of corporate personhood, a legal theory that has been developing since the 1800s. Until 1819 the law was clear that corporations had no constitutional rights. In that year, the Court held for the first time that the Constitution applied to corporations.
The key moment was the 1886 case, Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific, an unremarkable case about taxes on railroad property. One of the railroad’s arguments was that the tax they were challenging violated the then-relatively new 14th Amendment to the Constitution-the Amendment that specifically overruled Dred Scott.
The railroad claimed that it had been deprived of “equal protection under the law,” which is one of the guarantees of the 14th Amendment. The problem with the argument was that the Amendment said, “No state shall … deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” There is nothing in the language of the Amendment that makes it apply to anyone but humans-it uses the words “person” and “citizen.” The railroad’s argument was that, since a corporation was a legal entity, it was rather like a person and, thus, should enjoy the rights granted by the 14th Amendment.
The Court made no official decision on that issue, and it is discussed nowhere in the Court’s opinion. But in the headnotes (an unofficial summary of the case, not written by a judge), the court reporter, a former president of a small railroad line, quoted the Chief Justice as saying that the Court did not want to hear arguments on whether the 14th Amendment applied to railroads because “we are all of the opinion that it does.”
A lawyer who based an argument on a headnote would be laughed out of court. Yet the headnote in Santa Clara has been treated ever since as a statement of the law. From that crack in the door, the Constitution has been broken open to gradually provide corporations more of the rights granted to humans.
We have gone from a Constitution that nowhere mentions corporations, let alone grants them rights, to Citizens United, which says that the Constitution cannot tell the difference between General Motors and a member of the general public.
Corporations are now a sort of super-being: They can live forever, they cannot be jailed, they have no conscience-yet they also enjoy virtually all the rights that humans have.
“[T]he Court’s opinion is thus a rejection of the common sense of the American people, who have recognized a need to prevent corporations from undermining self-government since the founding, and who have fought against the distinctive corrupting potential of corporate electioneering since the days of Theodore Roosevelt. It is a strange time to repudiate that common sense.” But for the style, those words might have come from one of the activists working to abolish corporate personhood. They are actually the words of Justice John Paul Stevens, speaking for the four dissenters in Citizens United.
A Turning Point
Eighty percent of Americans agree with Justice Stevens, and they’re ready to demand a return to common sense. The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), founded by Thomas Linzey in 1995, has long championed abolishing corporate personhood. Citizens United “opens peoples’ eyes,” says Mari Margil, CELDF’s associate director. “Very often we walk into communities and they’ve never heard of corporate constitutional rights, or they think it’s an academic concept that’s not important for their lives. So we have to show through stories, through examples, through breaking down how our structure of law came to be and how it works,” says Margil. “Now Citizens United allows us to speed that process up a bit.”
Riki Ott and David Cobb are working under the banner of Move to Amend, a coalition that launched its Web site the day the Citizens United decision came down. In less than three months, says Cobb, without coverage in a single mass media outlet, more than 77,000 people have signed the group’s online petition for a constitutional amendment to reject the Citizens United ruling. Move to Amend now counts among its growing steering committee and key partners more than 20 progressive organizations, including Black Agenda Report, the National Lawyers Guild, Velvet Revolution, and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.
A partnership of Voter Action, Public Citizen, the Center for Corporate Policy, and the American Independent Business Alliance launched Free Speech for People (FSFP), also on the day of the decision, and also seeking a constitutional amendment. They worked with Rep. Donna Edwards (D-Md.) on the amendment she has introduced in the House, which restores the right of Congress and the states to regulate corporate spending. They have collected about 50,000 signatures on their petition.
John Bonifaz, legal director of Voter Action, has participated in FSFP presentations. “It’s pretty clear that the public is ahead of Washington,” Bonifaz says. “Washington, D.C. is looking at relatively modest reforms. The people around the country are very clear on the idea that corporations aren’t people. They believe the Citizens United ruling is a threat to our democracy and to the First Amendment.”… [emphasis added]
Inserted from <Common Dreams>
There you have it. The doctrine of corporate personhood ultimately rests on a biased clerk’s comment, not a judicial opinion. The doctrine of money as speech stems back to Buckley v. Valeo decision in 1976. Democrats in Congress had passed comprehensive election reform over Gerald Ford’s Presidential veto. While the Court upheld most of the law, it rejected limits on how much individuals may contribute to their own campaign, using the First Amendment as a basis for the decision. I disagree. If the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees equal protection under the law, allowing unlimited self-contribution by a rich candidate undermines the speech of a poor candidate.
In my opinion, the only way in which to resolve the issue of money in politics is with 100% public financing for all candidates for federal office. To minimize the burden on taxpayers, television networks can be required to provide set and equal amounts of advertising time to candidates in return for their exclusive licenses to use bandwidth, a limited publicly owned resource. Until we get money out of politics, money will rule our nation. So I reiterate…
Corporations are NOT people! Money is NOT speech!
Update: I don’t know why it took off but as of 11:45 AM, this article has had over 15,000 views.
19 Responses to “Corporations Are NOT People!”
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Well I couldn’t agree more with what you said. When the Supreme Court handed us this ream of crap my wife and I were visibly upset. We felt well here it is, the final death blow to our country. It wasn’t missiles, nukes, planes being flown into buildings, No it was our Supreme Court that did us in. Seems they did what no other country could do, the slogan death to America was for us real because of it.
For years people who never voted would tell me , why should I, there all the same, crooked.
So as a result of inaction by the people and mobilization by others, Elected officials with an agenda came to power. This would include Presidents too. An example was Ronald Reagan. He started this trend to change the America into what he though it should be. Other Republicans Presidents did the same. This was done by the hand picking of Supreme Court Justices. Now every President has that right, but it’s usually done with a moderate eye. Not to far to either side. The Republicans have put Justices that are far to the right. Some say extremist. The main reason I feel this is done is Rowe v Wade. This decision has galvanized that Party with
a one thought referendum of change at all cost.
The other fly in their soup has been Business. That approach to this has been an any cost
mentality since the turn of the last century. I constant fight between Parties. Teddy Roosevelt, FDR , Truman, Kennedy, and Johnson all had epic battles with Big Business and the support out of Congress for them. Congress at times had a deregulation as their priority. That’s because of who we elect and their agenda.
This all brings us back to the Supreme Court. Because of who we elected they got to have their way,with their ideas. Small Government which is another word for leave business alone and of course Abortion. They got their way for now and Corporations are as TC said super humans. I don’t think it will be long before Abortions are once again illegal. I could go on and on…. The point I was trying to make is if we have a extreme right leaning Judicial Branch, it’s our fault. We didn’t bother to pay attention.
Tim, I have to agree. Two things have done more to contribute to this state of affairs than any others: ignorance and apathy.
The day we get money out of politics is the day you and I stop watching football. In other words, don’t bet on it. 🙂
Randal, I guess we will watch the SCOTUS Scum play the House Hooligans in the Super Bowl. 😉
This is one of the worst SCOTUS decisions ever. Allowing unlimited corporate money into campaigns (as if there weren’t enough already), takes the power from the people and transfers it to their masters, the corps. TC you are right – they have become some super human entity.
At least everyone, Dem, Indies and Repubs all agree that this is a shitty ruling. That’s a good way to get an amendment passed, but in the mean time, we need legislation to curb this fiasco until the amendment passes. I expect the party of NO to reject this idea, since they are the recipients of most of the largess. Not to say that the Dems don’t take their fair share as alot of them are bought off too. (I’m an equal opportunity basher.)
Lisa, I agree. Although rank and file Republicansn oppose it, GOP politicians will defend it to the death.
If corporations are people, but unlimited by corporeal form and lifespan, doesn’t unlimited corporate speech itself, undermine the 14th Amendment since it supersedes any citizens right of equal protection?
Given the terms of the SCOTUS decision, however, I can’t wait to go stuff some speech into a g-string!
Welcome, Revdon. I agree and said so in my criticism of money as speech.
“corporations are not people”
they’re not faceless entities either. a corporation is comprised of individual people.
More importantly, corporations wouldn’t be buying favors if the government wasn’t selling them. The government that comprises of so-called “left-wing” people too.
By the way, if any of you think that political ambition is somehow more righteous than entrepreneurial ambition then you’re fucking stupid.
this is a useless post.
Welcome, inspector, despite your tone. If you resort to personal insult again, I will ban you. We argue policies here while treating each other with respect.
You are correct that corporations are comprised of individual people. Those people already have the right to donate, subject to legal limits, to candidates of their choice. To allow them to donate again as corporations, without limit gives them an unfair advantage,
You are also correct that the government, left and right, ought not to be selling favors. But where is the sense to fueling that corruption with even more money? That’s putting out a fire by throwing gasoline on it. Thank you for making my case for publicly financed elections.
I’d like to think that stupid people do not come here, but when they do, we identify them by the personal attacks they make, because they lack cogent arguments.
This is a useless post? Actually it’s my most successful post to date. Over 60,000 people have now read it.
What really is great about America is that I can say FUCK YOU SUPREME COURT OF AMERICA you fucking slaves to the REPUBLICANS
Welcome, Jose. I agree with your angst, but we must harness that anger into something useful.
Adding insult to injury the Dems in their typical corporatist appeasing way, merely want to provide for disclosure of corporate political contributions and spending, rather than advance any real reform.
This may be the only small window of opportunity we’ll see to reverse this calamity against democracy. Real Democrats are still in the minority. Republicans and Republicrats are still obstructing democracy.
Dave, I agree, but think that the proffered “solutions”: are needed as stop gap measures, because real reform will take years.
This ruling was a victory for free speech. The First Amendment does have an escape clause allowing Congress to censor if individuals are associated with organizations. That is what was protected by this ruling: individual rights, really. No corporation can speak or say one word: it is all individuals.
“Corporations are NOT people! Money is NOT speech!”
1) Corporations are made up of people who have Constitutional rights.
2) It is, actually, when laws are passed against transfer of money with the express goal of censoring unwanted views. Money is speech and freedom of the press. Imagine if Congress passed a law preventing newspaper publishers from buying printing equipment or paying the operators of such equipment. Technically, it would be a law strictly about money, right?
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The Fourteenth Amendment covers equal protection under the law. People in the private sector who earn more than other people are not a matter of the law: And laws to prevent rich people from putting their own money into campaigns won’t work: What is to stop a Meg Whitman or Ross Perot from merely writing a book and then engaging on a mass publicity campaign for the book without calling it running for office? There are so many ways around this. But really, if you don’t like a candidate, don’t vote for him/her.
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As for the proposed solutions by the Democrats, I do not mind any of them. The ones I have seen (disclosure, etc) do not bring back censorship.
Check
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances”
The prohibitions against abridging freedom of the press and of speech make no exceptions for individuals in organizations, or organizations themselves. If you don’t like what someone says about a canddiate, why not just ignore it?
Welcome, Dmarks. As an individual, there are limits to what I can contribute, by law. If I control a partnership with many partners, I still have the same legal restrictions. My partners may match my contributions, if the so choose, subject to the same restrictions. But if I control a corporation, my contributions are unlimited. That is not equal protection. It would be if the other shareholders could match my contributions, if they so choose, subject to the same limitations. Nowhere does the Constitution equate money and speech. Your argument rests entirely on the premise that money does equal speech. According to current law, you are correct, but in my opinion Buckley v. Valeo was decided amiss and that decision needs to be overturned.
Tom: I don’t object on principle to organizations being limited from making donations to campaigns. That IS money. What I want protected is the right of organizations (the people in them) to speak out on political issues. This includes running their own advertisements.
“our argument rests entirely on the premise that money does equal speech.”
If you are seeking to cut off funds in order to silence advertising, then you are assuming that money = speech right off and going from there. Reminds me of an editorial I read in a major Democratic Party-leaning newspaper in favor McCain Feingold. In the editorial, they opposed negative campaign ads, and they saw campaign finance reform as a way to silence them. To them, “money = speech” was true.
Dmarks, I don’t object to organizations spealing out on issues either. That’s what 527s are for. Corporations can aggragate shareholders’ and members’ donations with PACs and form 527s for issue advertising.
Then you get back into these tight regulations being a form of govenrment censorship. Strict controls on political speech. I don’t recall “only through 527’s” ever mentioned in the Bill of Rights.