On Citizen's United and Corporate Personhood

[Lowkey]

I've seen a lot of back and forth on twitter and in other discussion boards about revoking corporate person-hood and reversing Citizen's United.  While I fully agree with the ideas people are trying to express there, what they are articulating is the wrong way to go about it.

 

Firstly, corporate personhood as a legal concept actually protects us.  The standing of corporate personhood is what allows us to brings suit against them in a court of law.   Revoking it outright is a troubling subject, because depending on how it is done it could leave behind the ability for corporations to engage in contracts (as they are collections of people) but the limited liability and lack of organizational standing would mean that we could not act against them.  That would leave us worse off that we are right now.

 

Secondly, the way the ruling on Citizen's United came down was based off First Amendment issues.  While I think the idea of money as speech is absurd and runs contrary to the ideal of "one man one vote" by giving outsized power to individuals, with crafting of that ruling we really can't stifle the power of the corporations without removing our own rights.

 

So what do we want to do?  Well the case to bring us for change is the 1886 ruling of Santa Clara County vs Southern Pacific Railroad.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.....c_Railroad

 It extended the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment to corporations.  If we overturn that we are able to remove the power of corporations without removing our ability to hold them accountable in the court of law or removing our own civil rights.

 

Now that will still leave us with the problem of individuals having more power because they have more money, and I have no idea how to solve that, but by splitting up the ability of individuals to act in concert and hide their influence through corporations, solving that issue becomes a lot easier.

[Emily Church]

Lowkey, you make an excellent point. Do you have any suggestions for how to translate those thoughts into a concise demand?

[BenS]

I think Lowkey makes an excellent point. Unfortunately, I don't think it's possible to boil it down to a concise demand. Rather, I think it indicates that we have more research and discussion ahead of us before we start issuing official demands/grievances. We should follow Lowkey's lead and inform ourselves and others about the issues facing us so we can collect frame a response.