You don’t have to go far on a college campus to hear someone railing against corporations in America. “Corporations control our government!” is a fairly common sentiment among liberal crowds, but does anyone really know what that means? Why are corporations able to apparently control our legislators and the sausage-factory of congress more than any of us? Before this starts, lets define a corporation. A corporation is an entity created by the state that gives the people who create the corporation limited liability and in return, the state grants them a charter in order for them to “serve the public good.” I’m not talking about all businesses right now, only those that have been chartered by the government to have limited liability in return for a commitment to serve the public good, and thus should be held to a higher standard than all other businesses. So how did we get to a point where corporate power seems to seep through every pore of our government? I give you the Supreme Court case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company.

Ask any law student about Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific and you’ll hear that this is the case that allowed corporations rights of legal persons under the 14^th amendment; that is, they have the rights of freedom of speech, protection against unwarranted search, etc. It is these rights that trans-national corporations use today to stay behind their “corporate veil” of secrecy. But what if Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific didn’t give corporations those rights at all? What if corporations were never legally given those rights but found some loophole to give themselves constitutional rights that would make the founding fathers turn over in their graves? Well…that’s exactly what happened.

The case was over the railroad company’s right to not pay a tax that came out of a change to the state constitution that denied corporations “the right to deduct the amount of their debts [i.e., mortgages] from the taxable value of their property, a right which was given to individuals.” The railroad company challenged that in court and, when it reached the Supreme Court, the final decision only addressed the state’s right to levy the tax, not once were corporation’s rights under the 14^th amendment mentioned. Where the controversy begins is with the Chief Justice, Morrison Waite, making a passing comment to the court reporter, J.C. Bancroft Davis (the President of the New York Railroad Company). He told the reporter that he personally felt that corporations have rights under the 14^th amendment as legal persons, and the reporter included it in his report. This opinion is just that, one man’s opinion, but because it was included in the report it has stood as a loophole for corporations to use to call themselves persons. But make no mistake, the clerk’s notes do not count as law, and corporations’ rights as legal persons are based off of a misconception.

Ever since this has become the de-facto law of the land, corporations have used their supposed rights to increase their political power. One example of this is when Dow Chemical used its “right” of the 4^th Amendment to refuse EPA inspections of its plants. Is this where we want our country to be? How can corporations be persons? They never die, can make wealth forever, can be split into multiple sub groups, and can own other “persons.” We certainly can’t physically do that and neither can any natural, real person. Corporations can’t “speak,” so they claim they should be allowed to speak with money, meaning that their profits go right into political speech. Here’s where a new Supreme Court case is risking more corporate takeover of our government. Citizens United v. FEC was just recently reargued in front of the court and runs the risk of, if John Roberts gets his way (he spent his life as a lawyer protecting corporate personhood), stripping away all campaign finance laws and opening the floodgates of corporate money to candidates. I don’t think I need to get into the risks that entails for our government. Is Wal-Mart a person? I don’t think so.

Tags: Corporate Personhood, Supreme Court

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 14th, 2009 at 10:34 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.