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At the Constitutional Accountability Center (CAC), we are marking Constitution & Citizenship Day this year by focusing on who the Constitution serves and protects: We the People. This month, the Supreme Court is in the midst of an historic deliberation over whether the rights We enshrined in our Constitution should be extended to protect corporations. Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (widely known as the “Hillary: The Movie case”) has been billed as a case about free speech in elections. In reality, however, it is a case raising a challenge to more than a century of campaign finance law – and more than two centuries of constitutional text and history – that have preserved the principle that corporations and people should be treated differently when it comes to regulating the financing of elections. (Click here to read the “friend of the court” brief filed in Citizens United by CAC and The League of Women Voters, explaining how efforts to remove this distinction run contrary to the text and history of our Constitution.)
The significance of this attack on such a fundamental principle of American democracy — that the constitutionally-guaranteed individual rights were intended to protect We the People — has been the subject of both humorous and serious attention this week. On Tuesday night’s show, Stephen Colbert dedicated The Colbert Report’s “The Wørd” to the “rights” of corporations, in a six-minute segment (featured below) extolling the fact that “corporations are people too!” Taking a more serious tone this morning, The Wall Street Journal discussed the history of “corporate rights,” noting how newly-seated Justice Sonia Sotomayor impressed many during the Citizens United argument last week when she openly questioned the validity of corporations’ legal status as “persons.” This most recent media attention follows several weeks of increasing concern and curiosity among mainstream media about the consequences of this monumental case.
It is alarming, on Constitution & Citizenship day, to consider that a conservative majority on the Supreme Court may be poised to unleash corporate money in elections, and heartening to see increasing media attention being paid to this disturbing possibility. For decades, conservatives have attempted to lay claim to the Constitution, yet today they are turning their back on the document’s text and history and threatening to equate the rights of corporations with constitutional rights of American citizens. We hope that today, progressives will reflect on the meaning and importance of our Constitution’s text and history, and on why now, more than ever, we must fight to preserve the integrity of the Constitution as a document of the People, by the People, and (most important) for the People.
Originally posted at Text & History. Hannah McCrea is proud to work for the Constitutional Accountability Center (CAC), a law firm and think tank dedicated to demonstrating how the text and history of the Constitution uphold progressive outcomes.
15 Comments
Thanks for a terrific post, Hannah. And a huge thank you to the CAC for their work on this issue and especially for the brief in the Citzens United case.
Great post, Hannah. If the Court decides to implement such an outrage we’ll have to start considering whether court-packing legislation, or a Constitutional Amendment removing legal personhood from corporations is a better way to go.
I’d like to ’second’ Jim’s thank you — and add to it.
I grew up among ‘Main Street Republicans’ and they were not as economically ignorant as the Grassleys, the Corkers, the Blue Dogs, and the other corporate toadies we see today.
And FWIW, this is one of Colbert’s most brilliant take-downs. Ever.
If Roberts Scalia Thomas get their way we will have to replace birth certificates with articles of incorporation.
To give this some context try reading this sites history on the matter:
Our Hidden History of Corporations in the United States
read the rest at the web site!!
Corporations do not deserve the same Constitutional rights as living breathing people!! PERIOD!! I do not trust SCOUTUS on this matter and I fear they will wipe out what our founding Fathers intended fo “Corporations”!
Of course the Rich and the Right want them to be able to Buy the Best Government for the rich at the People’s expense!!
On Constitution Day, listen to the Constitution!
This is a nice little recording I just found:
http://www.law.uchicago.edu/constitution#con
“David Currie, Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago Law School, passed away on October 15, 2007. In honor of his life and work, we present this unique recording of his reading of the United States Constitution. The recording was made on April 26 and May 5, 2006 at the studios of WHPK at the University of Chicago and post-production was done.”
Who in DC would support either one?
Now that’s a clever idea. However, we still wouldn’t have the bucks needed to make ourselves politically effective.
And everyone would have to migrate to Delaware during labor. /s
Maybe we can get another state with better vacation possibilities to compete with DE on easy incorporations.
Another organization that has been fighting ‘corporate personhood’ for many years can be found here
They have speakers available for those wishing to educate their communities on this issue.
I would also point others to ‘You Street‘; just imagine if the Congress and President WERE NOT BEHOLDEN to those who now fund campaigns; do you really think this healthcare debate,etc. would be happening?
Ex-Senator Simpson sent me this today:
“I generally try to avoid watching clever cats like Stephen Colbert, but the other night I caught his segment on the Citizens United vs. FEC case pending before the Supreme Court. As you probably know, the Supreme Court seems poised to overturn a century’s worth of rules limiting corporations from dumping their treasuries into our democratic elections. Just imagine the Senator bought to you by….. (you fill in the blanks!)
Stephen seems to recognize the true ridiculousness of granting corporations, which are legal creations, the same free speech rights that we generally reserve for human beings. But what he may not know is that no matter what the Court rules, public funding is still fully constitutional — and the only means we have of making certain that We the People own our politicians, not the corporations.
Today I’m personally inviting Stephen to take a vacation from his urban New York City studio and come visit us in Cody, Wyoming. I’ll give Stephen a tour of my favorite watering holes in the land of Buffalo Bill and leave him a real dose of “truthiness” about fixing our nation’s elections. It’s high time we educate the Colbert Nation about the real solution to special interest money in our politics: public funding.
To get Stephen’s attention, I’m counting on thousands of you to join me in sending this invitation on to Stephen Colbert.”
I can’t emphasize enough that public financing of campaigns is the only mechanism to short circuit the ongoing corruption of our electoral process.
Thank you for an excellent but depressing post, Hannah. I’ve used the word “outrageous” so much since 911 that when I read posts like yours I’m at a loss for words. These days I really feel like one of those cartoon characters who sticks her finger in the dike in a vain attempt to plug a leak only to find 10 more leaks springing up to take it’s place. Quite frankly I’m beginning to run out of fingers AND TOES!
“During arguments in a campaign-finance case, the court’s majority conservatives seemed persuaded that corporations have broad First Amendment rights and that recent precedents upholding limits on corporate political spending should be overruled.
But Justice Sotomayor suggested the majority might have it all wrong — and that instead the court should reconsider the 19th century rulings that first afforded corporations the same rights flesh-and-blood people have.
Judges “created corporations as persons, gave birth to corporations as persons,” she said. “There could be an argument made that that was the court’s error to start with…[imbuing] a creature of state law with human characteristics.”
How far Justice Sotomayor pursues the theme could become clearer when the campaign-finance decision is delivered, probably by year’s end. “
http://online.wsj.com/article/…..17643.html
This case exposes the fundamentally anti-American, monarchical aspirations of Conservatism. The American Revolution was fought against the claim that property–inherited titles and crowns, ancestral estates, and royally chartered corporations–had political rights. Conservatives have fought this basic American belief ever since, starting with their assertion that a slaver’s supposed human property entitled him to extra votes and ending, for the moment, in this outrageous claim.
Incorporation is a privilege that we grant for the greater good. It compromises our individual property rights–our ability to recover losses–in the interest of commerce. If corporations do not appreciate our generosity, we should just do away with incorporation and get on with suing corporate officers for every nickel they have.
Not very many right now. That’s a movement we’ll have to build.