Does Corporate Cash Equal Speech?

The Supreme Court of the United States will be making a decision this session that could have a devastating effect on elections.

Since the rise of modern corporations a century ago, Congress has restricted their participation in political campaigns, recognizing the potential for vast corporate treasuries to drown out the voices of citizens. Since 1947, federal law has prohibited corporations (and unions) from using their general treasury funds for campaign contributions or expenditures. But the Supreme Court now threatens to upend that tradition. Ironically, it seems poised to usher laissez-faire into the marketplace of ideas just as we have seen the bankruptcy of that theory in the capital markets.

Last term the Court took the unusual step of ordering re-argument in a narrow and technical case. Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission asked only whether the FEC could bar a nonprofit corporation from distributing, via on-demand cable TV, Hillary, a film critical of Hillary Clinton, during the 2008 presidential primary. After the case was argued, the Court on its own initiative raised the stakes dramatically by requesting further briefing and argument on a much broader question--whether it should overrule two prior decisions upholding Congress's power to restrict corporate speech in political campaigns. If it does so, it will leave the voting process even more vulnerable to capture by the wealthy and powerful.

One of the precedents under consideration, Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce (1990), is significant chiefly for its recognition that government has a "compelling interest" in counteracting "the corrosive and distorting effects of immense aggregations of wealth that are accumulated with the help of the corporate form and that have little or no correlation to the public's support for the corporation's political ideas." Citizens United has set its sights on overturning the principle. Its suit has been joined by the ACLU and esteemed lawyer Floyd Abrams. While this is an issue reasonable progressives can disagree on, we believe Abrams and the First Amendment advocates at the ACLU are confusing the speech of a corporation with that of living, breathing citizens… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <The Nation>

The following article explains how we came to this point.

Talk about "judicial activism"! Through a series of remarkably aggressive procedures, a majority on the US Supreme Court seems determined to give new powers, even personal traits, to inanimate entities that amass money through commercial transactions, namely corporations. The Court could have kept the focus of the Citizens United case on whether the group's video about Hillary Clinton should be subject to the McCain-Feingold federal law that regulates electioneering through the broadcast media. It could have, for example, ruled that the video was provided to viewers at their request via the Internet, not widely pushed onto them through the airwaves. 

But the Court took a different route, introducing on its own new Constitutional issues about the political powers of corporations not argued by the appellant and not buttressed with a robust factual record from a lower court. Citizens United used funds from corporations to finance its video; corporations can't vote or be put in jail, but they can live "in perpetuity" and shield individuals from legal liability. Why should they have the political "free speech" rights guaranteed for "we the people," rather than more narrow "commercial speech" rights developed through centuries of litigation? Individual stockholders and employees can band together into political action committees and, using their personal money, exert influence on the political process; that's far different than allowing the CEO of Mega-Firm to write checks from the corporate treasury to candidates…

Inserted from <Facing South>

Corporations do not speak.  They have one function only.  They exist to profit.  I have long opposed the existence of corporations in their current form.  I consider it obscene that a financial entity should enjoy the same rights and privileges as a human being, but share few of the responsibilities.  Most of the ills facing our society today result from corporate greed, as corporations have abused their rights and profited at our expense.  I was highly surprised to learn that someone with far more influence than I shares my view.

In her maiden Supreme Court appearance last week, Justice Sonia Sotomayor made a provocative comment that probed the foundations of corporate law.

During arguments in a campaign-finance case, the court's majority conservatives seemed persuaded that corporations have broad First Amendment rights and that recent precedents upholding limits on corporate political spending should be overruled.

But Justice Sotomayor suggested the majority might have it all wrong -- and that instead the court should reconsider the 19th century rulings that first afforded corporations the same rights flesh-and-blood people have.

Judges "created corporations as persons, gave birth to corporations as persons," she said. "There could be an argument made that that was the court's error to start with...[imbuing] a creature of state law with human characteristics."…

Inserted from <Wall Street Journal>

Kudos to Justice Sotomayor!

To answer my question in the title, money does not equal speech.  If we are to have equal rights under the law, any provision that magnifies the rights of wealth, violates the principal of equality.  For that reason, I am also for publicly finances elections.  How else can we cure the effect of corporate cash: the best Congress money can buy?