Sounds like weird semantics to me.
Is this what you mean?
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People have constitutional rights.
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Corporations don’t.
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Corporations are composed of people so…corporations have constitutional rights even though they don’t.
No.
Corporations do have rights under Supreme Court precedent going back to 1886.
Citizens is not one of the those cases. Under Citizens the government cannot restrict corporate speech because it would infringe on rights on of the individuals that make up corporation. But it does end up with basically the same result.
I think this is where the confusion comes in.
When restricting rights the courts apply higher standards of scrutiny.
They are not so blind as to say it is a simple either/or decision.
A publisher is publishing on behalf of an individual. Yes the publisher makes money but they are not advancing an agenda. Citizens United clearly was.
A corporation is NOT an individual. There is no way you could say that all stockholders hold the same political views. The corporation CANNOT speak for them.
The laws that restricted Citizens United were not that they could never publish but that they could not do so within a certain timeframe of an election (at least pretty sure that was the deal).
Admittedly you get into a difficult debate over what constitutes an advertisement and what is political speech and so on.
I think there is a public interest in seeing such things restricted. Democracy demands it and it includes speech I would support as well as that I wouldn’t.
I’m kinda curious about something.
Lets say I decide that oil companies are kindness and goodness incarnated and write a book saying as much. To publish I just print out copies at kinkos. Can the government censor that?
Lets imagine I find a publisher to print my book. Since the publisher is a company, can the government censor my book?
Lets say no publisher will print my book and I think kinkos is too expensive. So I form a corporation in order to secure loans to buy equipment and become my own publishing company. Can the government then censor the book?
Now lets say I go to Exxon and say ‘here’s the book I wrote, will you help finance publishing of it?’ and they give me enough to go to one of those vanity press places. Does that let the government censor my book?
Imagine I went to Exxon to ask for financial assistance and they offer to buy the copyright to my book and print it in house. Can the government censor the book then?
Lets say the reverse happened, Exxon came to me and offered me money to write a book for them to publish. Does that give the government the power to censor?
Keep in mind, it is exactly the same book and written by the same person in all cases. The only difference is how publishing was financed and, in the last scenario, the reason I wrote the book. Under which scenario would I not have the freedom of speech, and why?
Getting late and I need to go to bed but I thought he 1886 decision was problematical. Either most thought it was poorly decided then or it has been interpreted badly.
I’ll look it up tomorrow (hoping someone saves me the trouble).
Out till then (enjoying the conversation…just life intruding making me seek sleep).
Under current law, the government cannot censor any of those books.
No
No. If they did they’d be censoring you, not the company.
Still just you, they cannot censor you. The loans are your problem. Bank does not care beyond wanting their monthly payment.
If Exxon pushes the book then they are (were) restricted in when they could publish. If it was about a candidate for public office they could not publish within a certain timeframe before the election. After that they could publish no problem.
Same as just above (as I understand it).
See above.
Here’s an example of how this decision could be abused. I want to publish a completely false and libelous book about somebody. Now if I published the book as a person I’d be legally liable for what I wrote and I don’t want that. So I form a corporation Nemotech and have Nemotech publish the book instead. My victim wants to sue the author and I tell him, “Go ahead. Sue Nemotech. I’ll just dissolve the corporation.” My victim says he’ll sue me instead and I say, “For what? I didn’t publish that book. Nemotech did. It’s a limited liability corporation and you can’t sue me for more than my interest in the corporation. Which will be zero as soon as I dissolve it.”
Citizens has nothing to do with that situation.
Interpreted badly. The actual Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad decision did not confer personhood on corporations. The idea that it did came about because the issue of whether or not a corporation could file an appeal had been raised as part of the case (if not, then the whole appeal could be dismissed with no further ruling). One of the justices said, as background to the case, that the court had decided to allow the corporation to file an appeal like it was a person and let the hearing proceed. This decision was not included in the ruling.
It was regarded as a minor point at the time (the actual issue of the case was about some tax deductions). It would be over fifty years later before another justice cited this decision as a precedent on corporate personhood.
You do understand that the situation I described was hypothethical and therefore very unlikely to have been mentioned in a Supreme Court ruling?
The issues in Citizens have nothing do with that hypothetical situation.
And Santa Clara had nothing to do with the issues of Citizens. It’s called precedents.
And considering the situation I described was the use of a corporation to provide cover for a form of speech that was illegal, I’d say that Citizens had a lot to do with the situation I described.