What Ruling Was This?

[INRM]

There was some kind of court ruling in which a company claimed that because according to an old supreme court ruling, Corporations are people and thus any attempt to limit the amount of money corporations could contribute to politics would be a violation of the first Amendment. It was this year...

Does anybody have a link to that?

 

[Dunstan]

I believe you're thinking of the Citizens United v. FEC case, the one that arose out of the Hillary: The Movie "documentary" that the FEC ruled was subject to the McCain-Feingold campaign finance laws.

Here's a rundown of the case.

Just to clarify, the case is about restrictions on speech by corporations, not donations of money to candidates. The Supreme Court ordered reargument in this case to decide whether it should overrule two prior cases that upheld restrictions on corporate political speech. There's a concern among at least some of the Justices that this line of cases is proving to be unworkable.

One thing to remember is that "corporations" aren't simply for-profit businesses. Lots of advocacy groups from all parts of the political spectrum organize themselves as corporations. If the government can restrict political speech simply because it's not coming from individuals, that puts groups like the ACLU, NRA, AARP, NAACP, etc. in danger, too.

Edited to add: the case hasn't actually been decided yet. I believe the reargument was held last month, and the Court could issue a ruling any time now.

 

[Dunstan]

A good synopsis of the issues here.

 

[KoihimeNakamura]

The ruling granting corporations powers and rights as individual is a very early one, IIRC, one of the first heard.

 

[psychictv]

I think this is the case that granted corporate personhood in 1886
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Clara_County_v._Southern_Pacific_Railroad

And this is the case that declared money to be speech
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckley_v._Valeo

Both are total insanity IMO.

 

[Beerina]

Money used to buy advertising is speech in that sense. Makes perfect sense to me. "You have too much money" is intended to mean "you have too much speech and I can't keep up with it, which endangers my chance at (re)election".

Well, fine. Go seek to amend the Constitution, then, and place the first restrictions on the First Amendment. If you can get 3/4 of the Several States to go along with it

I want neither congressional, nor judicial activism "judging" or "deciding" that the First Amendment shall thus be compromised "for a really, really good reason", said reason being declared Good by those the First Amendment is designed to prevent from securing power.

 

[Praktik]

Alright Beerina - let's say that you're a Republican and you're upper-middle management at a company, or say, a large shareholder in the company.

The company decides to use its own funds to fund a book slagging the Republican candidate and promoting the Democratic candidate - wouldn't you feel as if the company resources were misused? That the place you're helping earn a profit (as an employee) or profiting from (as a shareholder) is using those funds to direct "speech" to a place you don't like as an employee/shareholder?

 

[INRM]

The problem with this is that this "Corporations are people" and "Money is the way they speak" is that with the power corporations possess, Corporations would therefore be way more powerful than any ordinary person would be, and their speech way more influential than any ordinary person could deliver.

With a ruling like that America would turn into an Oligarchy, which is a society ruled by the powerful, and influential, not by "We the People". It's undemocratic.

INRM

 

[maddog]

It was number 11 on the list.

 

[marksman]

With a ruling like that America would turn into an Oligarchy, which is a society ruled by the powerful, and influential, not by "We the People". It's undemocratic.

Most of the rights afforded by the Bill of Rights are undemocratic. The whole point of rights is to limit the power of the democracy.

Here, the majority cannot tell the rich to shut the hell up. Is that undemocratic? Yup. Just as was intended.

 

[marksman]

I think this is the case that granted corporate personhood in 1886
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Clara_County_v._Southern_Pacific_Railroad

Actually, corporate personhood dates back farther than that.

In Dartmouth College v. Woodward, 17 U.S. 518 (1819), the State of New Hampshire tried to force the trustees of the College to reinstate an ousted President. The Supreme Court held that a corporation was entitled to constitutional protection because the owners of the corporation were themselves entitled to constitutional protection, and the corporation is merely a manifestation of their collective right to contract under the Contract clause of the Constitution.

This decision was based on an earlier decision -- Fletcher v. Peck, 10 U.S. 87 (1810). There, the State of Georgia had sold public lands to private individuals by a public act. It was later revealed that the Act was procured through bribery. The State of Georgia repealed the Act and then tried to repossess the land that had been sold. However, some people had already sold the land acquired through the Act to innocent purchasers. The Supreme Court found that the Contract Clause barred the States from extinguishing contract rights granted to its citizens.

Fletcher was one of the first Supreme Court decisions after Marbury v. Madison (1803), which established the Supreme Court's right to invalidate unconstitutional statutes.

So it is incorrect to think the Supreme Court came up with this doctrine of recognizing corporations as individuals 100 years after the fact. Granting corporations rights is a natural outgrowth of the right to contract, and has been recognized since the birth of this Republic. Corporations are the manifestation of the will of the individuals who comprise the owners of the corporation, and thus retain the rights of the individual owners. The only issue has been whether there are any individual rights a corporation does not possess.

 

[INRM]

Marksman,

Well, actually in America it is supposed to be majority rules, simply within reason. That's why there are restrictions to prevent a tyranny of the majority, to prevent the majority's persecution of the minority.

The minority, however, should not be ruling the majority, and the minority should not be persecuting the majority.


INRM

 

[psychictv]

Granting corporations rights is a natural outgrowth of the right to contract, and has been recognized since the birth of this Republic.

But there is a difference between agreeing that a corporation should be granted some rights, and arguing that a corporation should be granted all of the same rights as an individual.

Corporations are the manifestation of the will of the individuals who comprise the owners of the corporation, and thus retain the rights of the individual owners.

Which, since corporations are immortal, allows them to accumulate far greater powers than any individual. Since corporations exist above and beyond the individuals that comprise the corporation it doesn't necessarily make sense to assign them the same rights as individuals. And since the whole point of corporations is that they limit the liabilities of the individual owners, it seems only fair that we should similarly limit the corporation's rights in exchange for this benefit.

 

[marksman]

Well, actually in America it is supposed to be majority rules, simply within reason.

Yes, "and within reason" means there are things that the majority can't do, like tell people they can't speak.

The minority, however, should not be ruling the majority, and the minority should not be persecuting the majority.

I'm not sure how that's pertinent to our discussion. The fact that minorities have rights the majorty cannot infringe does not mean the minority persecutes the majority.

 

[marksman]

But there is a difference between agreeing that a corporation should be granted some rights, and arguing that a corporation should be granted all of the same rights as an individual.

Yes. But my point is that the decision in the latter half of the nineteenth century was not a huge surprise to legal observers of the time. It was a natural outgrowth of the law that had been developing.

Which, since corporations are immortal, allows them to accumulate far greater powers than any individual.

Which is exactly why individuals engage in cooperative endeavors like incorporating. The whole point of corporations is to let groups of people achieve things that they could not achieve as disparate individuals.

since the whole point of corporations is that they limit the liabilities of the individual owners, it seems only fair that we should similarly limit the corporation's rights in exchange for this benefit.

That doesn't make any sense. The individuals owning the corporation get the benefit of limited liability. Shouldn't any "fair exchange" for that also fall onto the individual owners? Instead of limiting the rights of corporations, which is one of the reasons we have corporations, shouldn't we be punishing the individuals who actually reap the benefits of incorporating? Of course this would mean attacking individual shareholders, which I think would be a really bad idea.

Restricting corporations from owning property or having the same rights of free speech as individuals isn't fair. It's just a policy decision that people shouldn't be allowed to contribute resources to cooperative enterprises. Generally, we only do that for enterprises that are themselves illegal. But speech is not illegal. That's a weird turn of events, and not one with which I personally would be comfortable.

If I am allowed to speak freely, and my brother is allowed to speak freely, why can't we pool our resources to speak more effectively? That's what corporate free speech is, at its heart. What troubles people is that the power of cooperative enterprise so easily dwarfs the ability of any one individual to speak, and large cooperations appear to operate as if it has a mind of its own. That's an illusion. A corporation is the combined will of its shareholders -- imperfectly manifested to be sure -- but nothing more than a cooperative effort. We are corporations. We have individuals. The "fiction" of corporations being treated as individuals is simply a recognition that corporations are comprised of individuals with rights that don't vanish simply because these individuals choose to act in concert.

 

[Dancing David]

Restricting corporations from owning property or having the same rights of free speech as individuals isn't fair. It's just a policy decision that people shouldn't be allowed to contribute resources to cooperative enterprises. Generally, we only do that for enterprises that are themselves illegal. But speech is not illegal. That's a weird turn of events, and not one with which I personally would be comfortable.

People still have all the freedoms that are involved before they incorporate, as individuals. They can also give money to PACs, as a corporation, in many cases.

So you feel that Nestle-Beich should have unlimited power to give money to influence US elections?

 

[marksman]

People still have all the freedoms that are involved before they incorporate, as individuals.

People don't incorporate. They register a corporation as a manifestation of their cooperative efforts.

So you feel that Nestle-Beich should have unlimited power to give money to influence US elections?

I feel Nestle-Beich should have as much right to spend money to communicate with voters as their constituent shareholders enjoy because Nestle-Beich is simply an extension of its shareholders.

 

[Dancing David]

Well it is up to the SCOTUS, but what about the shareholders who disagree, or if my union (CESP) decides to support someone I don't like.

And again the remedy exists already, you can give money to PACs.

 

[marksman]

Well it is up to the SCOTUS, but what about the shareholders who disagree, or if my union (CESP) decides to support someone I don't like.

If you join a group and you don't like how the group acts, you leave the group. For shareholders, ou sell your investment. For unions, you have to leave the union. Sometimes leaving a group comes with a high price (lost value of the investment or unemployment).

the remedy exists already, you can give money to PACs.

How is that a remedy? If the law is telling me I have less rights when I spend money to join a group, it isn't remedied by telling me I can spend more money in another group.

 

[psychictv]

Restricting corporations from owning property or having the same rights of free speech as individuals isn't fair.

Oh, boo hoo.

It's just a policy decision that people shouldn't be allowed to contribute resources to cooperative enterprises. Generally, we only do that for enterprises that are themselves illegal.

We put these restrictions on churches. Why not corporations? There is no restriction of individual rights. You can still individually donate as much as you wish (within campaign finance laws of course). Oops, so if money is speech, then there are restrictions on individual speech. So the whole first amendment argument doesn't make any sense.