Too bad the Supreme Court didn’t read your column before it issued its Citizens United decision!
The problem with restricting corporate free speech as in Citizens United is not that the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are people. What the Supreme Court ruled is that the people in corporations have First Amendment protection and that you do not lose your civil rights merely by organizing into a corporation. Aside from the fact that the entire case is pretty much an issue of attempted revenge by Hillary Clinton against a group that offended her with a movie, you have to consider the implications:
Virtually all the news media in this country are owned by only six gigantic corporations. Why should these six corporations have the ability to say whatever they want, but all others would be restricted? Why give these six corporations a monopoly on the First Amendment? How is freedom of speech and of the press protected by what would essentially be a federal licensing scheme that decides who can be a newspaper? The answer, of course, is you can’t do that. No one, not even an employee or shareholder of a corporation, should be restricted from the public square.
I actually agree with Citizens United in that a corporation should have a right to political speech since they are affected by US laws. For example, I as an individual may not care about IP law but qua a stockowner of Disney, I would expect the corporation to be concerned about IP law.
HOWEVER they should still follow the same campaign laws individuals do and this end-around of how an anti-Trump or Clinton ad does not have to follow the rules of an official Clinton or Trump campaign ad.
One should keep in mind that “corporate person” also includes nonprofit organizations.
ACLU
NAACP
AFL-CIO
Greenpeace
If you muzzle groups on one side, you will also muzzle groups on the other side.
darn I was expecting a debate about megacorps and corporate citizens ala shadowrun …
If there are six, doesn’t that prove that it is NOT a monopoly?
For prosecution purposes, if they collaborate under the table, they have a shared monopoly.
Bumped because the column is once again up on the Straight Dope homepage.
Cecil was overstating things to write that “after the… 1886 [SCOTUS] decision, artificial persons were held to have *exactly *the same legal rights as we natural folk” (emphasis added). They really weren’t. Corporations cannot, as such, vote in an election, adopt a child, enlist in the military, serve on a jury, or marry a human being, off the top of my head. But they can do many other things, not all of them IMHO good for the republic, as Citizens United shows.
If a corporation is a person, then can it be held to be enslaved by its board of directors?
Corporations have the right to do all of those things. The fact that no corporation has tried to do them is not evidence that they do not have those rights.
Cite? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
I don’t know if there is any evidence, pro or con. For instance, is there a law on the books specifically stopping a corporation from adopting a child and/or is there a case where a corporation tried to adopt a child? If the answer is “no” to both, then the claim is not extraordinary-it is merely unknown.
Apparently we discussed the possibility of corporations adopting children almost a decade ago in this thread.
Adoption is a matter of state law; the U.S. Code is Federal law.
Federal law supersede state law (Supremacy Clause). Corporations are persons, not partial people, according to the law. Anything a person can legally do, a corporation can legally do because they are also persons. I welcome your cite showing otherwise.
American law draws a distinction between “natural persons,” that is, human beings, and other kinds of persons such as corporations: Natural person - Wikipedia
Notwithstanding the Supremacy Clause, Federal law does not intrude on adoptions, which are, as I wrote, a matter of state law. In Alaska, for example, only adults over age 18 may adopt children: https://www.acrf.org/adoption-faqs.php?tn=4
Jury service in Ohio, for instance, is limited to registered voters or licensed drivers: Law Facts: Jury Service | Ohio State Bar Association
Voting has always been a right reserved for human beings in the US: The U.S. Constitution | Constitution Center
Arkansas law, as in some other states, refers to males and females in dealing with marriage, while corporations are of course asexual: Arkansas Annulment and Prohibited Marriage Laws - FindLaw
Joining the US military typically requires a high school diploma (enlisted) or college degree (officers): https://www.military.com/join-armed-forces/join-the-military-basic-eligibility.html
I am aware of no corporation which has ever done any of these things. I welcome your cite showing otherwise.
Has this ever been attempted by a corporation, tho? Has the law ever been tested?
I’m willing to bet it’s never been tested in court that a corporation cannot register to vote or to receive a driver’s license.
I see the term “citizen” but not “human being” or “natural person”. Corporations are citizens, aren’t they? I mean, they are persons who originated in the US, right?
Except I don’t have to show that corporations can do those things; I already did that by showing them to be citizens. It’s you who have made the claim, now, that these things you listed are prohibited to corporations, but you haven’t shown that to be the case. You’ve shown that they are proscribed by law but you haven’t shown that they would stand if challenged in court. Many things have been proscribed by law and later the courts find that the law is improper.
For instance, marriage only being between a man and a woman. That was said to be illegal too, but eventually the SCOTUS found that the law (the Constitution) did not allow that particular law to exist.
The fact that no one has ever done something is not evidence that it cannot be done, just that it hasn’t happened yet.
I can’t see why a corporation that wanted to cast a vote couldn’t sue to register to vote and I don’t see why they should be denied.
To be clear here, I don’t like the Dictionary Act and it’s contents. I think it was short-sighted and foolish to make a law saying that anything other than human beings are persons, and I think there’s a good chance that it will bite America on its fat ass even more than it already has.
You asked for cites, and I provided them. I asked you for cites, and you did not. Funny that, if corporations could do all these things you insist they could, that they haven’t since 1886.