The Fight Against Corporate Personhood
In the wake of a recent Supreme Court case (Citizens United v. FEC) that gave broad free speech rights to publically-chartered corporations, a grassroots movement is seeking to constitutionally limit what has become an unreasonable legal deference to these powerful, artificial entities. In the election context, the concern is that unbridled campaign or issue spending by corporations (spending which is now labeled as "speech" and therefore almost unregulatable) leads to a distortion of the democratic process. Because corporations are given the ability to amass capital by the state, Move to Amend argues that the state should retain the ability to limit corporate actions, including speech.
The movement has made waves, of late, as American municipalities begin lining up behind the push to declare that "human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights." The City of Boulder, Colorado, is one of the most recent to be considering putting a measure on the ballot allowing residents to voice their opposition to the Supreme Court precedent. Move to Amend has not endorsed any specifically-worded amendment at this time, but is working toward broad consensus among individuals and organizations as to the ultimate language.
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- 7-20-11
- John X's blog
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YES
Progressive libertarianism?
Fundamentally corporations are creations of government. Without the recognition of government and the grant of its existence from government, a corporation could not exist. The expression "private" corporation, although usually meaning one not publicly traded on the stock exchange, is actually completely incorrect. There are no "private" corporations. They are all public because they are granted existence by governmental charters.
Libertarians typically tend to conflate the rights to freedom of individual and rights of the corporation as if they were the same; yet clearly they are treated differently at so many levels in the law. If a corporation through negligence causes the death of an individual, we do not imprison or put to death the corporation. Corporations are taxed differently from people. Imagine a corporation paying tax in its income, as do individuals, not its profits.
I believe that this recognition of the fundamental difference between corporations and individual persons should be the foundation of a new form of Progressive Libertarianism. Individuals and sole proprietorships which do not hide behind the corporate shield should have the full rights in all spheres - economic and personal. Corporations in return for the granting of existence by government should have lesser "rights" and be subject to more regulation and restriction.
Jim Cross
http://www.broadspeculations.com
Charters
Correct me if I'm wrong...
media rights
Take a look at the First Amendment. The press has special, express freedom from censorhip. This movement is about limiting the general protections of the Bill of Rights to biological humans. Thus, natural persons and the press would continue to have a general freedom of speech, but corporations, as a rule, would not.
It's a good question what we should interpret "the press" to mean. Courts have reasoned that it does NOT mean any pamphlet that any corporation or person distributes. Should it cover propaganda disguised as news (Fox News)? Not easy issues, whether or not this new amendment passes.
Well, Here it is...
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.
Seems pretty clear to me, that all speech is protected by the Amendment as written. If they can abridge protection of some speech, why can't they abridge another of the protections, like that afforded the press?
You could argue that the President or the states are not barred from abridging these freedoms, since the Amendment only specifies congress can not make such laws, but since the President is supposed to only legally be able to enforce the acts of congress, & the courts have ruled that the states are bound by the same provisions as the federal government, so you're back where you started.
Of course they prevent people from assembling too, as well as trampling every other right, so why should free speech be any different?
You're right in that, as
You're right in that, as written, the First Amendment does not distinguish. However, courts have carved out exceptions for a long time. It is not protected speech to incite violence or yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater, as the saying goes.
In part because the First Amendment is not clear, the "Movement to Amend" is seeking to amend the constitution to clarify that the Bill of Rights is protecting the rights of humans only, not corporations. The press is singled out for protection, so the institutional press (whatever that is defined as) will continue to be free to speak, even though the press is mostly corporate.
Thanks for the comments.
Attack corporate Super-humanism, not corporate Personhood
The courts have indeed carved out exceptions, & those exceptions are themselves unconstitutional, but that's what happens when an agency gets to interpret the laws that supposedly bind itself.
Walter Block did a good job of tearing apart the example of yelling fire in a theatre in his book "Defending the Undefendable" (http://mises.org/books/defending.pdf pg. 69) I think one of his best arguments is that the particular example is spurious because even without making exceptions to freedom of speech, it's illegal since A) it's owned property, you don't have a right to come into my living room and practice your free speech, & B) it's defrauding the theatre goers of the service they payed for.
I still think the 1st amendment is clear, in that ALL speach is protected.
By making the press the only institution free to speak, you automatically make them unfree as well, because the government would be the ones to decide who qualifies as & is licensed as press, so it becomes more difficult for the press to criticize government for fear of losing their license to speach.
I don't think the problem with corporations is their having human rights, why should a group of people have any less rights than the individuals comprising it? The problem with corporations is the Super-human rights they possess that you and I do not. Namely, I think the problem with corporations is the limited liability they provide their owners, the barriers to entry they are able to raise through all the regulation they lobby for on their own industries, and the direct welfare they are able to lobby for as well.
If your or my property damages someone else or their property, we are liable, if a corporation damages people or property, the owners are held blameless. If the owners had "skin in the game" so to speak, & could be themselves bankrupted, or criminally charged, even for murder or manslaughter, for the actions of their property, we'd have less industrial accidents, less incidents like the news of the world created, etc.
Without barriers to entry we wouldn't have monolithic corporations with unprecedented power and wealth, they'd die a death of a thousand papercuts from smaller nimbler competition that can actually respond to customer demand.
And I need hardly go into why corporate welfare is a horrible idea.
Attack corporate super-humanism, not corporate person-hood.
I think we agree
Interesting ideas here, especially as relates to the press as an inherently unfree enterprise. But freedom itself is a notoriously slippery concept. Does it exist at all?
I do think we are on the same page in some ways, in that your position accepts the point of view that government should have the ability to delimit how coroporations function, separate from the ways they may regulate humans. Humans do not have unlimited life like corporations, so there is no need to regulate how long humans may live. But perhaps we should strictly limit how long corporations should live, as was the case in the early days of the corporate charter. But by equating corporations with "persons," and by extension granting them basic human rights, government under the US Constitution would be unable to "kill" a corporation (any more than it could regulate its speech).
I think abolishing the assumption that corporations have the same rights as humans is a lot simpler than trying to dismantle, piece by piece, the results of affording corporations basic rights, which helps give them the "super-human" abilities you cite. And attempting to rework the limited liability characteristic of corporations would so fundamentally change the concept of what a corporation is, you might as well concoct a whole new concept for the entity anyway.
a law that has deeply compromised our democracy.