The Supreme Court decision

[gwillen]

For those on my flist, if any, who support the Court's decision in /Citizens United v. FEC/, I would be interested to know your answers to the following questions:

Is a toaster a person?

Is a corporation a person?

Can you explain the difference?

What would it mean for a toaster to have a right to free speech?

What does it mean, precisely, for a corporation to have a right to free speech? This is not the same as the free speech rights enjoyed by any of the people involved as individuals -- this, as ruled by the court, is a separate right, belonging to the corporation as an entity in and of itself, completely independent of the rights of any of the individuals involved.

Can you explain the difference?

ETA: Justice Rehnquist's dissent in /First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti/
makes for excellent reading on the subject.

Comments

[platypuslord.livejournal.com]

I do not think it is really an accurate summary of the entirety of what Rehnquist says

For my convenience, and the convenience of the other readers of your blog who may have done even less research: could you please summarize the rest of his argument here?

[gwillen.livejournal.com]

I can try. My summary came out quite long (300 words to the original's 2300) but I think it's more readable than the original. I can try summarizing the summary if you'd like.

SUMMARY:

Rehnquist makes a number of points.

* Many legislative bodies at both the state and federal level have concluded that "restrictions upon the political activity of business corporations are both politically desirable and constitutionally permissible." The Court ought to think hard before ignoring that.

* Corporations have previously been held to be "mere creatures of law, [possessing] only those properties which the charter of creation confers upon [them]". Creating a corporation "does not invest it with all the liberties enjoyed by natural persons".

* If a state charters a corporation for a particular purpose, it necessarily guarantees to the corporation what liberty is necessary to carry out that purpose. I.e. a newspaper corporation is entitled to freedom of the press.

* Political speech is not necessary to the purpose of a commercial corporation.

* "A State grants to a business corporation the blessings of potentially perpetual life and limited liability to enhance its efficiency as an economic entity. It might reasonably be concluded that those properties, so beneficial in the economic sphere, pose special dangers in the political sphere." (There is a good deal of further material I could quote in this and the following paragraph, and I suggest reading this section in its entirety.)

* Furthermore, the statute under discussion would still permit political expression by a corporation "when a general political issue materially affects a corporation's business, property or assets." So it does not ban any speech that can possibly be germane to a corporation's purpose.

* Recent decisions on this topic have focused on the public's right to recieve information, rather than the speaker's right to say it. [I am interpolating a lot in the following sentence, but I think it's the most reasonable reading.] Since corporations are artificial creations of the state, the state's choice to create them with limited rights to political speech in no way restricts the public's rights of political activity which existed prior.