Skip to content

Corporate Personhood Must Be Challenged

Corporate Personhood Must Be Challenged

January 22, 2010 SVadmin Comments 1 comment

by Jane Anne Morris

(Editor’s note: The author wrote this article late in 2009 in anticipation of exactly the decision handed down yesterday by the Supreme Court in the case of Citizens United v FEC, a decision that some are calling the “mirror-image” of the Dred Scott decision of 1857. She has written extensively about the Supreme Court in her most recent book, “Gaveling Down the Rabble,” and is currently working on a new article about it that, she tells me, is an “indirect criticism of this case, but not a direct analysis.”)

When the “Hillary Clinton film” case is decided, headlines should declare, “Supreme Court affirms corporate personhood.” Instead, most media will call it a free speech decision. “First Amendment rights” will play the Trojan horse hauling corporate freight.

By first putting human beings and corporations into one basket labeled “things that have constitutional rights,” and then arguing about what “free speech” means, the Supreme Court has pitted the likes of the American Civil Liberties Union against advocates of campaign finance reform.

In one corner, arguing against limits on “speech,” we find Citizens United Inc. (the right-wing, nonprofit corporation that produced the Hillary film), supported by the ACLU. In the opposite corner, arguing FOR limits on “speech,” the Federal Election Commission and an assortment of groups supporting campaign finance laws.

Must we limit speech in order to have free and fair elections? Or must we accept corporation-dominated political debate in order to preserve free speech?

This false dilemma disappears if we reject corporate personhood – the idea that corporations have constitutional rights. Limiting corporate “speech” is not a constitutional infringement if corporations are not “persons” under the Constitution.

Corporate personhood encourages people to forget that every corporation is literally created by legislatures. Corporations of all kinds receive grants of power and privilege from the state; that’s why they incorporate. In the Citizens United Inc. case, the Clements amicus brief (on the FEC side) asks, “If the people’s elected representatives create legal structures for economic, charitable or other purposes, are they barred from preventing misuse of those structures for non-permitted purposes, such as political activity?”

Admitting the legal fiction of the corporation into the “rights” club has further consequences. With human beings and corporations joined at the hip in the body of constitutional law, the fruit of each people’s victory in strengthening or claiming a constitutional right is plucked up by corporate lawyers and used to defend corporations against the governments that created them.

That has been happening since the late 19th century, when the Supreme Court awarded the granddaddy of all corporate constitutional rights (equal protection and due process under the 14th Amendment) to railroad corporations.

In a famous Supreme Court dissent (1938), Justice Hugo Black ridiculed the justices’ grant of corporate personhood, and recounted the real function of the 14th Amendment during the first half-century after its adoption. Hint: It had little to do with protecting the rights of African-Americans, women or Native Americans.

Among Supreme Court cases about the 1868 amendment, Black wrote, “Less than one-half of 1 percent invoked it in protection of the Negro race, and more than 50 percent asked that its benefits be extended to corporations.” With corporations on the personhood wagon, rights that we think are protecting human beings are instead protecting corporations against the government.

In the current case, the biggest hope for some and fear for others is that the court will overrule Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, a 1990 case that preserved a scrap of state power to regulate corporate “political speech.” The widely touted “victory” was that the Supreme Court allowed Michigan to prohibit one kind of nonprofit corporation from using its monies for certain kinds of political speech.

Meanwhile, the Austin case accepts that money equals speech (following the Supreme Court’s 1976 Valeo decision), that corporations can spend treasury funds on initiatives and referendums, and that political action committees are legal and constitutional. But there’s more. Austin affirms that corporations are “persons” with constitutional rights, and that they have First Amendment rights, and equal protection rights.

Despite the hype and flutter around it, Citizens United Inc. v. FEC is not the big showdown about campaign finance reform. Whether the Supreme Court upholds the FEC and the Michigan law, or favors Citizens United Inc. and overrules Austin, corporate personhood will have won again.

Just as the single-payer option has been suppressed in the national health care debate, corporate personhood is all but ignored in discussions of campaign finance reform. Perhaps if “corporate personhood” made it into more headlines, we could shoo it out of the Trojan horse where it has obfuscated free speech and equal rights issues for too long.

Corporate anthropologist and Madison, Wisconsin resident Jane Anne Morris’ recent book, “Gaveling Down the Rabble: How ‘Free Trade’ Is Stealing Our Democracy” (Apex Press, 2008) is cited in an amicus brief filed in support of the Federal Election Commission in this case.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Articles, Politics
Corporate_Personhood

Post navigation

PREVIOUS
Library Ad Hoc Committee Endorses Non-LSSI Options
NEXT
Whose Rights?

Join Our Mailing List

One thought on “Corporate Personhood Must Be Challenged”

  1. Pingback: Court’s Campaign Money Ruling Is a Red Herring : Sierra Voices

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.

DONATE TO THE FOOD BANK OF NEVADA COUNTY

(CLICK IMAGE)

DONATE TO NEVADA COUNTY RELIEF FUND (click image below)

Erika Lewis, Shaye Cohn, Craig Flory – Got A Mind To Ramble

Jack Kornfield: A Steady Heart in Time of Corona Virus (Part I)

Tara Brach: A Steady Heart in Time of Corona Virus (Part II)

Subscribe to Sierra Voices Journal

Recent Posts

  • GOP Becoming Permanent Minority Party
  • Michael Klare, Heating the Planet Through a New Cold War
  • Impacts to Jobs and Housing from the Proposed Idaho-Maryland Mine
  • Milenberg Joys
  • 6 important truths about COVID-19 vaccines

Recent Comments

  • Douglas Keachie on The Most Urgent Issue in U.S. Politics is Not Biden or Trump, Not Who is President This Time
  • The Most Important Issue in US Politics is Not Biden or Trump, or Even Who is President This Time on How to stop an Insurrection Caucus: These reforms could reduce GOP extremism and save our democracy
  • (Posted by) Don Pelton on GOP Warns Dems About Court Packing (Cartoon)
  • Criminal Incompetence, Malignant Ignorance Will Lead to Hunger and Violence on A Nice Depression Now Benefits the GOP in 2022 and 2024
  • togel singapura hari ini on How Wall Street Has Turned Housing Into a Dangerous Get-Rich-Quick Scheme — Again

Archives

  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • November 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • December 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • January 2014
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009

Categories

  • Aging
  • Articles
  • Atlas Obscura
  • Authoritarianism
  • Black Lives
  • Black Lives Matter
  • Blog
  • Buddhism
  • Cartoon
  • Climate Change
  • Constitution
  • Corona Virus
  • Corruption
  • Democracy
  • Depression
  • Disenfranchisement
  • Economics
  • Education
  • Election Fraud
  • Environment
  • Farming
  • Fascism
  • Fire!
  • Food Insecurity
  • Foreign Policy
  • Forest Management
  • Fracking
  • Gender
  • Health Care
  • History
  • Humor
  • Hunger
  • Ignorance
  • Labor
  • Local
  • Masks
  • Medical Care
  • Men
  • Mental Health
  • Middle Class
  • Mining
  • MMT
  • Modern Monetary Theory
  • Music
  • Native Americans
  • New Cold War
  • Nutrition
  • Pandemic
  • Parenting
  • Poetry
  • Police
  • Politics
  • Populism
  • Press
  • Race
  • Reviews
  • Revolution
  • Right-wing terrorism
  • Rise Gold
  • Romance
  • Russiagate
  • Science
  • Technology
  • Trump Virus
  • Tuba Skinny
  • Tyranny
  • Uncategorized
  • Vaccine Safety
  • Voting
  • War
  • War on Government
  • Water
  • Watersheds
  • Wildfires

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org
© 2021   All Rights Reserved.