Wait, there's more. Wikipedia gives me a bit of special insight into this momentous decision. Here it is: "The doctrine of corporate personhood creates an interesting legal contradiction. The corporation is owned by its shareholders and is therefore their property. If it is also a legal person, then it is a person owned by others and thus exists in a condition of slavery -- a status explicitly forbidden by the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution. So is a corporation a person illegally held in servitude by its shareholders? Or is it a person who enjoys the rights of personhood that take precedence over the presumed ownership rights of its shareholders? So far as I have been able to determine, this contradiction has not been directly addressed by the courts."
I was having trouble believing what I was learning, so I turned to my friend Peter Shane, a law professor at Ohio State and one of the country's most respected Constitutional scholars. Here's what he told me:
"The most amazing thing about corporate status under the Constitution is that this fundamental question was resolved by the Supreme Court without any real discussion whatever. Scalia is supposed to be an originalist? I doubt anyone in 1789 understood the First Amendment as a limitation on Congress's capacity to regulate corporations. As for corporations being 'persons' under the Fourteenth Amendment, was the purpose of the Civil War to free corporations from state control? This is historical nonsense."
He also reminded me of the Roberts confirmation hearing I watched. "Remember," he said, "how Chief Justice Roberts said he would just be an umpire on the Court, calling balls and strikes? The Citizens United decision just exposes once again how radically activist the Roberts Court is, inventing law as it goes along. Roberts makes Rehnquist look like Brennan. The American people should immediately demand that Congress propose a constitutional amendment to make the right to vote in all elections a federal right and to authorize Congress and the states to regulate corporate participation in electoral politics."
Well, good luck with that Amendment, Peter. That's a long and tortuous process.
Meanwhile, we'll all have to take a big breath and sit back and wait to see if an even greater torrent of corporate money starts pouring into the political process - though it's not easy to visualize anyone actually having any more money.
Like a zillion other people, I invest in a bunch of mutual funds and a few equities. And like the rest of us, I do that to earn money. That's as far as I want the companies I invest in to go in representing me. Making money.
That's it.
I don't want to hear them saying they represent me politically or in any other way. They don't speak for me. Who they actually speak for is arguable. You might say they speak for their shareholders, that it's the shareholders who own the company. If that's true, then us shareholders should get to have a vote before the first penny of political booty is dispensed.
Corporations aren't doing that now. With the Supremes behind them, why would they start giving me a voice? Besides, that would make me a slave-owner, and I can't afford the housekeeping help I have now.
Some pundits have been saying that the Citizens United decision was downright radical. Well, I guess you could say that. After all, it did reverse about a hundred years of jurisprudence.
But what keeps me confused is that if the guys in the black robes wanted to be truly radical they could overturn the 1886 Santa Clara County decision.
Then we wouldn't have to be running about worrying about what more mischief the corporations will do with their newly reaffirmed personhood.
1 | 2
