Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission
| It's not just a good idea |
| Random enforcement |
“”...and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
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| —Abraham Lincoln failing at divination during his 1863 Gettysburg Address |
“”We favor such additional legislation as may be necessary more effectually to prohibit corporations from contributing funds, directly or indirectly, to campaigns for the nomination or election of the President, the Vice-President, Senators, and Representatives in Congress.
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| —Republican Party Platform... of 1912 |
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission was a very controversial[1] decision by the United States Supreme Court, holding that corporations, unions and not-for-profit organizations cannot be restricted from funding electioneering broadcasts. The decision struck down a provision of the McCain-Feingold Act of 2002 that prevented corporate funding of political broadcasts within a certain period of time before an election as unconstitutional under the free speech clause of the First Amendment. The decision has been cited as a potential change in the Roberts Court's stated philosophy of "incremental" change.[2][3]
While the decision has its ardent supporters, many fear the change it will have on US politics. In fact, more Americans believe in witchcraft than believe that the ruling will not lead to corruption.[4][5] It is widely seen as ideologically motivated, and possibly more so than the infamous Bush v. Gore decision of 2000.
In his 2010 State of the Union speech, President Barack Obama said "With all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests, including foreign corporations, to spend without limit in our elections." However, it overruled a law eight, not a hundred years old, the decision did not affect any bans on foreign corporations, and did not affect the limits on corporate direct contributions to a campaign, but spending on behalf of a campaign.
[edit] Corporate personhood
Citizens United hinged on the principle that corporations are people.
This is not a new notion in American jurisprudence. The corporate form of organization has been treated as a "separate legal person" since its inception. (In fact, to "incorporate" means to form a body, i.e. the body of an entity that will be treated as an artificial person under the law.) This allows a corporation to own property in its own name, to hire employees, to sue, and to be sued, separately and distinctly from the individuals who own shares in it. This gets around the rather sticky issue of contract liability inherent in business forms such as partnership, in which at least one person has to be the "real" owner of all the firm's property. It also allows the existing body of statutes and common law decisions regarding "persons" to operate for them.
The only question this leaves open is how far the statutes and the courts are willing to take the personhood of corporations. For example, although natural persons can marry and vote in elections, artificial persons such as corporations cannot. The 1936 Supreme Court case Wheeling Steel Corp. v. Fox, 298 U.S. 193, strongly implies that the 14th Amendment, which says that no state shall deny to any "person" the equal protection of the laws, should apply to corporations as well as natural persons.[6]
Even Chief Justice Roberts, who wrote the majority Opinion for the Citizens United case, feared what might happen if the case became a legal precedent for other extensions of corporate "personhood," and wrote that the case should not be considered a precedent. Well... thanks? Even a foreign entity -- a foreign-owned corporation or foreign government, or even a crime syndicate could now be able to make secret contributions to political campaigns.
[edit] Footnotes
- ↑ How Corporate Money Will Reshape Politics, The New York Times, 21 January 2010
- ↑ Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, Cornell University Law School
- ↑ What Congress Should Do About Citizens United?, SCOTUSblog, 24 January 2010
- ↑ More Americans Believe In Witchcraft Than Agree With Citizens United, Think Progress, 24 April 2012
- ↑ Washington Post-ABC News poll, 8 February 2010 (see item #35)
- ↑ Sort of -- see Cecil Adams' Straight Dope article on corporate personhood.