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

[physics-dude.livejournal.com]

I don't think we are on the same page here.

Individuals already have free speech and free association rights. When we talk about incorporation, we are in no way talking about limiting those rights. A corporate entity is given legal privilege (which may include tax exemption, or may just be protection of the individuals by creating a separate entity for the purposes of assets and liabilities). The question is why the individuals should be able to use that privilege to exercise their own personal rights or the rights of the association - they can produce and screen a political movie with their own money, but should they get any tax writeoff for doing so? I don't think they necessarily should.

If you are talking about the different privileges that are assigned to different corporations depending on their stated purpose, I think that is a different issue, and I'm not sure if I think it's ethical or not. But if we took away *all* corporate privileges, people still have free speech and association rights.