I’ve been considering the controversial *Citizens United vs. Federal Election *Commission case, which decided in essence that corporations are persons that have the same 1st Amendment free speech rights as anybody else. The consensus seems to be that it will take a constitutional amendment to overturn it, which makes me wonder the following.
The 14th Amendment says in the first sentence of its first section that all persons “born or naturalized” in the US are citizens. “Persons” are then considered to include even man-made corporations under Citizens United. Section 5 of the 14th Amendment says that Congress has the power to enforce by appropriate legislation the provisions of this article.
If Congress has the power to make appropriate legislation under 14(5), doesn’t therefore it already have the power to trim back the Supreme Court’s conference of personhood upon corporations under 14, without having a separate constitutional amendment?
If on the other hand corporations are persons, then shouldn’t they be considered in apportionment under the 14th Amendment Section 2? Delaware might pick up a couple of congressmen, given how many corporations are incorporated there.
Taking the Scalia strict constructionist approach, doesn’t the 14th Amendment only apply to persons “born” or “naturalized”, and thus strictly speaking doesn’t this preclude artificial entities created by state statute. Corporations aren’t born or naturalized, they’re created by paperwork.
What say you experts? How off base am I?
Note: I looked for a thread discussing this case but couldn’t find a current one. If I overlooked it I have no objection to the Mods consolidating this one with it. Thanks.
But certainly UNDER 14(5) Congress can make statues that can clarify and correct the Court’s decisions which appear to have wrongfully conferred personhood upon entities not sanctioned by the language of the 14th Amendment.
True enough, but that only goes to show how ludicrous it is to confer personhood upon corporations.
It was decided on the 1st Amendment free speech grounds, which one only reaches after deciding that corporations are “persons”, which they do not appear to be under the 14thA.
Do you suppose corporations don’t enjoy First Amendment protections and rights? This website is owned by a corporation - one that also publishes several newspapers. The case law is pretty explicit concerning the First Amendment rights of corporations in that circumstance, right?
Which is all dependent upon them being qualified persons in the first place, which really, they are not. Strictly speaking, corporations are mere creatures of the state they were chartered in, so-called “artificial people”, and have on the rights conferred by the incorporating statute. Certainly there is case law saying they have first amendment rights, but the foundation of those cases - that corporations are in fact qualified persons -appears dicey under the explicit language of the 14th Amendment (“born or naturalized”) , does it not?
This is the way I see it. The first amendment says:
While I think the Citizens United ruling is horrible and a danger to our country, I don’t see anything in the first amendment saying that laws abridging the freedom of speech are only unconstitutional if they apply to people.
With due respect, you are misrepresenting the nature of the Court’s decision. The purpose of the decision was not “confer personhood” on corporations. This assumption permeates your argument, but the assumption’s totally false.
As has already been pointed out, the Constitution, in any event, doesn’t limit free speech to “persons.” However, it’s simply not the case that this decision hinges upon declaring corporations to be something they previously were not. If you read the text of the decision, or any decent summation, that is not at all what the majority opinion was saying.