{"id":14359,"date":"2014-10-15T07:50:02","date_gmt":"2014-10-15T11:50:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=14359"},"modified":"2014-10-15T07:50:02","modified_gmt":"2014-10-15T11:50:02","slug":"stop-saying-citizens-united-treats-corporations-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=14359","title":{"rendered":"stop saying that Citizens United treats corporations as people"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Carbondale, CO) I yield to few in my abhorrence of Citizens United<\/em> and the political philosophy it represents. I think its view of “speech” is incompatible with the best (little-“R”) republican ideals, which have always sought to insulate politics from money. However, the decision did not define corporations as persons, nor did it use that conventional legal fiction as a premise. The “corporate personhood” reading of Citizens United<\/em> is an error that circulates in left-of-center echo chambers. Rather, the court treated corporations as associations, which indeed they are. The League of Women Voters is a corporation; Microsoft is an association of shareholders. Citizens United<\/em> argued that for-profit corporations had been “disfavored” and should be treated like other associations, meaning that they could use their own funds to expressly endorse candidates.<\/p>\n

In my view, the deeply problematic decision remains Buckley v Valeo<\/em> (1976), which equated speech with money. If money is speech, then incorporated groups have rights to spend money on politics because they are associations. If, however, you recognize that money distorts deliberation, you may seek to regulate campaign funds; there may be a case for “disfavoring” certain types of association, such as for-profit corporations, in the political marketplace.<\/p>\n

To be sure, regulating political money can infringe valid First Amendment rights, because it costs money to communicate effectively. Therefore, designing a regulatory regime is a difficult matter of balancing constitutional values. But the line of cases from Buckley<\/em> to Citizens United<\/em> (and on to McCutcheon v. FEC<\/em>, 2012) makes that balance more difficult to achieve and solidifies a debased public philosophy in which money simply equates with freedom of speech. <\/span><\/p>\n

That is the problem; “corporate personhood” is a superficially appealing talking point that doesn’t relate to the actual jurisprudence of the Supreme Court.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

See also Chief Justice Roberts on corruption,<\/a>\u00a0 the Supreme Court reflects the \u201cdegeneracy of the times\u201d<\/a> and how to respond to the Supreme Court\u2019s campaign finance decision<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Carbondale, CO) I yield to few in my abhorrence of Citizens United and the political philosophy it represents. I think its view of “speech” is incompatible with the best (little-“R”) republican ideals, which have always sought to insulate politics from money. However, the decision did not define corporations as persons, nor did it use that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14359"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14359\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14384,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14359\/revisions\/14384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}