corp person bak

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">not 2 here?</font><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">corpperson318</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">see main node 28th corp personhood for older content</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;new tag 28</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">good ppl oppose thus RED</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">evil support purple</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">format messed up bottom&nbsp; of 2 capt 3/18</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp; =</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div><div style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: medium;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></div><div style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: medium;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">am promise 12/20</font></div><div style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: medium;"><ul style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr" style="margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 21px;"><strong>21 states</strong>, most recently Alaska, have formally called for ratifying an amendment to the U.S. Constitution.</p></li><li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr" style="margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 21px;">Over&nbsp;<strong>75% of Americans</strong>&nbsp;from across the political spectrum agree that we must limit political spending in our elections.&nbsp;</p></li></ul></div><div style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: medium;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: medium;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">----</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div>Corporations can legally put carcinogens in our food without warning labels. Here's why</div><div>Cheerios has so much glyphosate in it, it should be labeled as toxic. Corporate free speech precedents prevent that</div><div>
</div><div>MATTHEW ROZSA</div><div>JULY 14, 2019&nbsp;</div><div>A recent study by the Environmental Working Group revealed something horrifying: Glyphosate, the active ingredient in the popular weedkiller Roundup, was present in 17 of the 21 oat-based cereal and snack products at levels considered unsafe for children. That includes six different brands of Cheerios, one of the most popular American cereals.</div><div>
</div><div>I've written before about the limits of corporate free speech when it comes to public safety, but on that occasion I discussed this insofar as it involved corporate-sponsored climate change denialism. Yet here we have something more tangible, more direct: The safe glyphosate limit for children is 160 parts per billion (ppb), yet Honey Nut Cheerios Medley Crunch has 833 parts per billion and regular Cheerios has 729 ppb. While the potential risks of glyphosate are fiercely debated, many scientists believe that it is linked to cancer.</div><div>
</div><div>So if there are unsafe levels of glyphosate in a cereal popular with children, why isn't this disclosed on the cereal boxes? The complicated answer has to do with a legal case that defined free speech as something that non-human persons, like corporations, have a "right" to, in a sense. That sounds absurd, perhaps, and probably not something the framers of the constitution intended. Indeed, the idea of "corporate constitutional rights" is a relatively new one, yet one that corporations' legal arms fight tooth and nail to preserve.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">There are several activist groups working to amend the constitution to undo the notion of corporate personhood and make it so that this mind-bending and harmful interpretation of corporate free speech is no longer enshrined in law. Move to Amend — as in, the constitution — is one such group.<b> Salon interviewed Kaitlin Sopoci-Belknap, the National Director of Move to Amend, </b>to understand how this weird legal situation came to exist.</span></div><div>
</div><div>What does glyphosate do to weeds?</div><div>
</div><div>Glyphosate is a non-selective herbicide, meaning it will kill most plants, not just weeds. It prevents plants from making certain proteins that are needed for plant growth.</div><div>
</div><div>What do peer-reviewed studies indicate it does to human beings and animals if they ingest it?</div><div>
</div><div>The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has labeled glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic” and the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment categorized it as a “chemical known to the state to cause cancer.”</div><div>
</div><div>How did glyphosate wind up in foods like breakfast cereals?</div><div>
</div><div>According to the U.S. Geological Survey, 250 million pounds of glyphosate are sprayed on American crops each year. Glyphosate is primarily used on Roundup Ready corn and soybeans that are genetically modified to withstand the toxin. Glyphosate is also sprayed on other non-GMO crops, like wheat, oats, barley and beans, right before harvest.</div><div>
</div><div>What have Monsanto and other companies done to suppress knowledge of its effects (lobbying, suppressing science, etc.)?</div><div>
</div><div>Monsanto has waged a sophisticated PR campaign to bully scientists and undermine findings that glyphosate is cancerous. In addition Monsanto and agribusiness leaders protecting the company's interests have a revolving door relationship with many agencies that are supposed to be overseeing and regulating the corporation. Monsanto and agribusiness associations have also made significant political contributions to Congressmembers like former Rep Lamar Smith from Texas who chaired the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee where he used his platform to undermine the [International Agency for Research on Cancer] when their cancer findings came out, accusing the agency of using "cherry-picked" science when determining that glyphosate is “probably carcinogenic.”</div><div>
</div><div>Good info on this is here.</div><div>
</div><div>Where do corporate constitutional rights play into why these companies don't have to have warnings about pesticides in their foods?</div><div>
</div><div>Monsanto has argued that California's Prop 65 labeling law is a violation of the company's First Amendment right not to speak.</div><div>
</div><div>What is the boundary separating corporate free speech between their responsibility to the public health? Have those boundaries shifted over the years?</div><div>
</div><div>The courts have expanded the ability of corporations to overturn labeling requirements on a number of occasions over the last 35 years. In 1986 the Supreme Court decided that the Pacific Gas and Electric Company in California was not required to allow a consumer advocacy group to use the extra space in their billing envelope, upholding the corporation's right not to speak and protecting the corporation's “freedom of mind.”</div><div>
</div><div>In 1996 the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a Vermont law requiring the labeling of all products containing bovine growth hormone and ruled that the right not to speak inheres in political and commercial speech alike and extends to statements of fact as well as statements of opinion.</div><div>
</div><div>In Nike v. Kasky in 2003 the Supreme Court heard arguments on whether purposeful untruths in advertising are protected political speech before sending the case back to a California court where it was settled in Kasky’s favor, finding that the state laws requiring truth in advertising had been violated. The question of whether the First Amendment gives a corporation the right to speak lies remains unsettled.</div><div>
</div><div>Legally speaking, why are companies allowed to have poisons in our foods without warning the public of that fact?</div><div>
</div><div>The Supreme Court never had the authority to determine that corporations have any Constitutional rights, including First Amendment rights. By granting corporations these powers, meant to be the ultimate protections for people from government overreach, it in effect means that in many ways regulatory agencies have no authority over corporate actions — even when those actions are determined to cause public harm. In cases involving the First Amendment right not to speak it is even more insidious because it means that their so-called right not to warn the public about their toxic products trumps our right to know what's in our food.</div><div>
</div><div>The only solution to this problem is to pass an amendment to the US Constitution to make clear that only human beings have Constitutional rights, and that government absolutely has the right to regulate corporations like Monsanto, so that they can no longer use the Constitution as a shield against public oversight and protection. The We the People Amendment will do just that.</div><div>
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</div><div>MATTHEW ROZSA</div><div>Matthew Rozsa is a breaking news writer for Salon. He holds an MA in History from Rutgers University-Newark and is ABD in his PhD program in History at Lehigh University. His work has appeared in Mic, Quartz and MSNBC.</div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">heritage BS</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/two-centuries-of-corporate-personhood-11548978712">https://www.wsj.com/articles/two-centuries-of-corporate-personhood-11548978712</a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">am promise:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The 28th Amendment is winning everywhere, not just in New Mexico and New Hampshire. In Wisconsin, Citizen Leaders are pushing their legislature to put a resolution on the ballot after nearly 100 local communities passed resolutions – including one in Speaker Paul Ryan’s hometown, Janesville, WI, where it passed with 84 percent support.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">3/18</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.c-span.org/video/?427014-8/we-corporations</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.amazon.com/We-Corporations-American-Businesses-Rights/dp/0871407124</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">winkler ucla</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We the Corporations chronicles the revelatory story of one of the most successful, yet least known, “civil rights movements” in American history.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We the Corporations chronicles the astonishing story of one of the most successful yet least well-known “civil rights movements” in American history. Hardly oppressed like women and minorities, business corporations, too, have fought since the nation’s earliest days to gain equal rights under the Constitution?and today have nearly all the same rights as ordinary people.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Exposing the historical origins of Citizens United and Hobby Lobby, Adam Winkler explains how those controversial Supreme Court decisions extending free speech and religious liberty to corporations were the capstone of a centuries-long struggle over corporate personhood and constitutional protections for business. Beginning his account in the colonial era, Winkler reveals the profound influence corporations had on the birth of democracy and on the shape of the Constitution itself. Once the Constitution was ratified, corporations quickly sought to gain the rights it guaranteed. The first Supreme Court case on the rights of corporations was decided in 1809, a half-century before the first comparable cases on the rights of African Americans or women. Ever since, corporations have waged a persistent and remarkably fruitful campaign to win an ever-greater share of individual rights.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Although corporations never marched on Washington, they employed many of the same strategies of more familiar civil rights struggles: civil disobedience, test cases, and novel legal claims made in a purposeful effort to reshape the law. Indeed, corporations have often been unheralded innovators in constitutional law, and several of the individual rights Americans hold most dear were first secured in lawsuits brought by businesses.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Winkler enlivens his narrative with a flair for storytelling and a colorful cast of characters: among others, Daniel Webster, America’s greatest advocate, who argued some of the earliest corporate rights cases on behalf of his business clients; Roger Taney, the reviled Chief Justice, who surprisingly fought to limit protections for corporations?in part to protect slavery; and Roscoe Conkling, a renowned politician who deceived the Supreme Court in a brazen effort to win for corporations the rights added to the Constitution for the freed slaves. Alexander Hamilton, Teddy Roosevelt, Huey Long, Ralph Nader, Louis Brandeis, and even Thurgood Marshall all played starring roles in the story of the corporate rights movement.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">yikes</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to the newest poll on the NFL imbroglio, 64 percent of Americans believe that the league should force its players to stand during the opening performance of “The Star Spangled Banner.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One can almost hear the whimpers of progressives stressing the importance of “free speech.” The reality is that most Americans don’t know, and wouldn’t care if they did.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center recently discovered that 37 percent of Americans could not identify a single freedom that the First Amendment of the Constitution guarantees. Only one in four Americans could correctly name all three branches of government.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Lawsuit Seeks Personhood Rights for Colorado River</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.ecowatch.com/colorado-river-lawsuit-2489790989.html</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A lawsuit filed Monday is seeking to establish personhood rights for the Colorado River--a unique move that could have larger implications for environmental law.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The suit, brought by Denver lawyer Jason Flores-Williams against Colorado and Gov. John Hickenlooper, names the river itself as a plaintiff and environmental group Deep Green Resistance as an ally of the body of water to appear in court on its behalf.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Flores-Williams says the suit is intended to force humans to take better care of natural resources by creating a legal consequence for inaction. The river, which supplies water for 36 million people in seven states, has been egregiously overused, and studies have shown climate change is already causing the river to shrink.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As reported by the New York Times:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"If a corporation has rights, the authors argue, so, too, should an ancient waterway that has sustained human life for as long as it has existed in the Western United States. The lawsuit claims the state violated the river's right to flourish by polluting and draining it and threatening endangered species. The claim cites several nations whose courts or governments have recognized some rights for natural entities."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For a deeper dive:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">New York Times</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">9/17</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://movetoamend.org/wethepeopleamendment</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">HJR 48 1/17 Nolan</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">42 dems and&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Jones, Walter B., Jr. [R-NC-3]&nbsp;&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. McCollum, Betty [D-MN-4] 01/30/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Cartwright, Matt [D-PA-17]* 01/30/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Ellison, Keith [D-MN-5]* 01/30/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Pocan, Mark [D-WI-2]* 01/30/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Takano, Mark [D-CA-41]* 01/30/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Blumenauer, Earl [D-OR-3]* 01/30/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. DeFazio, Peter A. [D-OR-4]* 01/30/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. O'Rourke, Beto [D-TX-16]* 01/30/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Slaughter, Louise McIntosh [D-NY-25]* 01/30/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Grijalva, Raul M. [D-AZ-3]* 01/30/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Lee, Barbara [D-CA-13]* 01/30/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Conyers, John, Jr. [D-MI-13]* 01/30/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Engel, Eliot L. [D-NY-16]* 01/30/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Tonko, Paul [D-NY-20]* 01/30/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Raskin, Jamie [D-MD-8]* 01/30/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Khanna, Ro [D-CA-17]* 01/30/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Capuano, Michael E. [D-MA-7]* 01/30/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Lieu, Ted [D-CA-33]* 01/30/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Norcross, Donald [D-NJ-1]* 01/30/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Jones, Walter B., Jr. [R-NC-3]* 01/30/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Beyer, Donald S., Jr. [D-VA-8] 02/01/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Serrano, Jose E. [D-NY-15] 02/01/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Huffman, Jared [D-CA-2] 02/06/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Norton, Eleanor Holmes [D-DC-At Large] 02/06/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Bonamici, Suzanne [D-OR-1] 02/28/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Davis, Danny K. [D-IL-7] 02/28/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Kilmer, Derek [D-WA-6] 03/01/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Adams, Alma S. [D-NC-12] 03/10/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Jayapal, Pramila [D-WA-7] 03/15/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Fudge, Marcia L. [D-OH-11] 03/15/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Walz, Timothy J. [D-MN-1] 03/23/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Kind, Ron [D-WI-3] 03/23/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Gabbard, Tulsi [D-HI-2] 04/04/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Welch, Peter [D-VT-At Large] 04/04/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Cummings, Elijah E. [D-MD-7] 04/06/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. DelBene, Suzan K. [D-WA-1] 04/25/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Speier, Jackie [D-CA-14] 05/02/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Moulton, Seth [D-MA-6] 05/18/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Schakowsky, Janice D. [D-IL-9] 05/18/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Kaptur, Marcy [D-OH-9] 05/22/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. McGovern, James P. [D-MA-2] 06/07/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Bass, Karen [D-CA-37] 06/15/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Perlmutter, Ed [D-CO-7] 06/21/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Corporate “Free Speech” Racket</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">How corporations are using the First Amendment to destroy government regulation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">by Haley Sweetland Edwards</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/janfeb-2014/the-corporate-free-speech-racket/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;sum hist post hobby lobby&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.brennancenter.org/blog/hobby-lobby-argument</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">7/14</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">prompted by?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no vid link</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.npr.org/2014/07/28/335288388/when-did-companies-become-people-excavating-the-legal-evolution</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Are corporations people? The U.S. Supreme Court says they are, at least for some purposes. And in the past four years, the high court has dramatically expanded corporate rights.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It ruled that corporations have the right to spend money in candidate elections, and that some for-profit corporations may, on religious grounds, refuse to comply with a federal mandate to cover birth control in their employee health plans.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">These are personal rights accorded to corporations. To many, the concept of corporations as people seems odd, to say the least. But it is not new.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The dictionary defines "corporation" as "a number of persons united in one body for a purpose." Corporate entities date back to medieval times, observes Columbia law professor John Coffee, an authority on corporate law. "You could think of the Catholic Church as probably the first entity that could buy and sell property in its own name," he says.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Indeed, having an artificial legal persona was especially important to churches, says Elizabeth Pollman, an associate professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Having a corporation would allow people to put property into a collective ownership that could be held with perpetual existence," she says. "So it wouldn't be tied to any one person's lifespan, or subject necessarily to laws regarding inheriting property."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Later on, in the United States and elsewhere, the advantages of incorporation were essential to efficient and secure economic development. Unlike partnerships, the corporation continued to exist even if a partner died; there was no unanimity required to do something; shareholders could not be sued individually, only the corporation as a whole, so investors only risked as much as they put into buying shares.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By the 1800s, the process of incorporating became relatively simple. But corporations aren't mentioned anywhere in the Constitution, leaving the courts to determine what rights corporations have — and which corporations have them. After all, Coca-Cola is a corporation, but so are the NAACP and the National Rifle Association, and so are small churches and local nonprofits.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"All these truly different types of organizations might come under the label 'corporation,' " Pollman observes. "And so the real difficulty is figuring out how to treat these different things under the Constitution."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the early years of the republic, the only right given to corporations was the right to have their contracts respected by the government, according to legal historian Eben Moglen.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The great industrialization of the United States in the 1800s, however, intensified companies' need to raise money.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"With the invention of the railroad, you needed a great deal of capital to exploit its purpose, " Columbia professor Coffee says, "and only the corporate form offered limited liability, easy transferability of shares, and continued, perpetual existence."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In addition, the end of the Civil War and the adoption of the 14th Amendment provided an opportunity for corporations to seek further legal protection, says Moglen, also a Columbia University professor.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"From the moment the 14th Amendment was passed in 1868, lawyers for corporations — particularly railroad companies — wanted to use that 14th Amendment guarantee of equal protection to make sure that the states didn't unequally treat corporations," Moglen says.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nobody was talking about extending to corporations the right of free speech back then. What the railroads sought was equal treatment under state tax laws and things like that.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Supreme Court extended that protection to corporations, and over time also extended some — but not all — of the rights guaranteed to individuals in the Bill of Rights. The court ruled that corporations don't have a right against self-incrimination, for instance, but are protected by the ban on warrantless search and seizure.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Otherwise, as the Cato Institute's Ilya Shapiro [fedsoc] puts it, "the police could storm down the doors of some company and take all their computers and their files." [true? who?]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But for 100 years, corporations were not given any constitutional right of political speech; in fact, quite the contrary. In 1907, following a corporate corruption scandal involving prior presidential campaigns, Congress passed a law banning corporate involvement in federal election campaigns. That wall held firm for 70 years.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The first crack came in a case that involved neither candidate elections nor federal law. In 1978 a sharply divided Supreme Court ruled for the first time that corporations have a First Amendment right to spend money on state ballot initiatives.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Still, for decades, candidate elections remained free of direct corporate influence under federal law. Only money from individuals and groups of individuals — political action committees — were permitted in federal elections.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Then came Citizens United, the Supreme Court's 5-4 First Amendment decision in 2010 that extended to corporations for the first time full rights to spend money as they wish in candidate elections — federal, state and local. The decision reversed a century of legal understanding, unleashed a flood of campaign cash and created a crescendo of controversy that continues to build today.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It thrilled many in the business community, horrified campaign reformers, and provoked considerable mockery in the comedian classes.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Daily Show [vid?]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"If only there were some way to prove that corporations were not people," lamented the Daily Show's Jon Stewart. Maybe, he mused, we could show "their inability to love."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Colbert Report</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Fellow Comedy Central comedian Stephen Colbert tried unsuccessfully to get the question of corporate personhood on the South Carolina ballot, and also formed a superPAC, which asked whether voters would be comfortable letting Mitt Romney date their daughters' corporations.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But there are serious people on both sides of this issue.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Cato's Shapiro sees all corporations, when they spend on political campaigns, as merely associations of like-minded people.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Nobody is saying that corporations are living, breathing entities, or that they have souls or anything like that," he says. "This is about protecting the rights of the individuals that associate in this way."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Countering that argument are those who note that individuals are perfectly free to give money to candidates with whom they agree, and to spend unlimited amounts independently supporting those candidates. They shouldn't need a corporation to express themselves, the argument goes.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Some critics, like Pollman, see a difference between for-profit and nonprofit corporations. A nonprofit corporation formed to advance particular political views is one thing, she says. A large for-profit corporation is something else entirely.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"There's no reason to believe that the people involved — shareholders, employees, even the directors or managers — have come together for an expressive purpose related to anything other than really what the business is doing," she argues.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And shareholders and employees, Pollman observes, have no real recourse if they disagree with how corporate money is spent in campaigns.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And then there is the money-is-not-speech argument. The problem for First Amendment believers, Moglen says, arises not because they think corporations shouldn't have rights so much as they think money isn't equal to speech.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"And we are now winding up using constitutional rules to concentrate corporate power in a way that's dangerous to democracy," he says.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That, of course, is not how the Supreme Court majority sees its decision. The court has said that because speech is an essential mechanism of democracy, the First Amendment forbids discrimination against any class of speaker.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It matters not, the court said just this year, that some speakers, because of the money they spend on elections, may have undue influence on public policy; what is important is that the First Amendment protects both speech and speaker, and the ideas that flow from each.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.cc.com/video-clips/wc91m5/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-heavy-settle</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">tahir sq aug 11v mit clip 3:34 jon stewart fine = cut; 2012 JPM jgoff jokes</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">colbert superpac</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">7 min</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.cc.com/video-clips/av6bvx/the-colbert-report-colbert-super-pac---coordination-resolution-with-jon-stewart</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2670208</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In-Corp-O-Real: A Psychological Critique of Corporate Personhood and Citizens United</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">12 FSU Business Review 1 (2013)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">109 Pages Posted: 7 Oct 2015&nbsp;&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Teneille R. Brown</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">University of Utah - S.J. Quinney College of Law</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Date Written: October 1, 2012</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Abstract</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It seems absurd today that a robot’s political speech could ever warrant First Amendment protection. And yet, fifty years ago the same claim regarding corporations would have seemed equally absurd. But here we are, with anthropomorphized corporations enjoying political free speech rights equal to ordinary human beings. While corporations are constitutional people and robots presently are not, it is not obvious that this will, or should, remain this way forever. In the not-too-distant future, robots will more closely resemble human beings in appearance and function. When — not if — this happens, how will courts distinguish corporations from robots for constitutional civil rights analyses? Throughout this Article, I will use robots as a practical foil for corporations to reveal the errors in the way the Supreme Court impetuously granted corporations political free speech rights as entities distinct from their members. I hope to prove that precisely because man-made corporations share more in common with robots than with human beings, we should not stretch the metaphor of personhood too far to apply our civil rights to them. Specifically, we should not bestow corporations with political speech rights that are equivalent to those of biological people based flimsily upon the fact that they metaphorically possess a few traits that humans also share...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">11/16</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Over 600 communities have passed local resolutions and over 300 ballot measures in support of a 28th Amendment. In addition to Washington, seventeen states have made similar calls for a constitutional amendment including: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and West Virginia.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">list of bad act-ors</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://movetoamend.org/corporate-rule</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Corporate Rule Stories</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">South Dakota Lawmakers Overrule Voters' Wishes</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">State Preemption as Barrier to Local Control</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Airbnb Deems City Rental Laws Violate Its "Constitutional Rights"</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Exxon Mobil Claims Constitutional Rights to Avoid Revealing Climate Change Cover-up</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Saudi Arabia "Buys" Power in Uber Corporation and Our Elections</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">?"Free Trade" Agreements Clobber People's Sovereignty</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sovereign Citizens Don't Scold Their Corporate Creations</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Corporate Role in Flint's Horror Story</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Big Ph?armaceutical Corporation Makes Billions Lying about Drug's Safety to Children and the Elderly</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Drug Corporation's Free Speech "Rights" Trump FDA's Approval Process</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">State Denies Texas Community's Anti-Fracking Rights</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">California's Drought Policy Serves Corporations First, People Second</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Florida-based Mining Corporation Buys Rewrite of Wisconsin Law</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Corporations Sue Hawaiian Government and Attempt to Overturn Laws They Say Violate Their Constitutional Rights</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">tpp and nafta tribunals:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">fs4ppl</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nevada just became the 19th state to pass a resolution calling on Congress to propose a 28th Amendment to the Constitution to overturn Citizens United and to reclaim our democracy. On Thursday afternoon, the Nevada state assembly passed SJR 4, urging Congress to propose an amendment to the United States Constitution to allow the regulation of political contributions and expenditures.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We are now halfway to the required number of states to ratify this amendment!</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Senator Nicole Cannizzaro&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.democracynow.org/2017/5/1/massachusetts_ag_maura_healey_on_why</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">GOODMAN: I also spoke to Maura Healey, who participated in the elected leaders’ news conference, attorney general of Massachusetts, and asked her about her role in a suit filed by a coalition of attorneys general against ExxonMobil.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ATTORNEY GENERAL MAURA HEALEY: Well, it was just a year ago where we—when we sent subpoenas to Exxon to ask them a simple question: Tell us what you knew, when, about climate change and the impact that burning fossil fuels was going to have on the environment, because based on widely reported, publicly available information, we had concern that Exxon may not have told the truth to the public, to consumers, to its shareholders, about what it knew. We sent those subpoenas. They turned around, they sued us to try to stop us from investigating this.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So far, we’ve been fighting it out in court. So far, we’ve been winning. And I hope that soon we will get the documents from Exxon, so that we can have our questions finally answered. That’s where we’re at right now. We won in Massachusetts courts. We won in New York courts. And recently, the court in Texas dismissed the case from Texas and moved it back to New York. And we had a good hearing the other day, and we’re awaiting a decision from the court, Amy. But hopefully we’ll be in a position soon where we can continue to go forward with our investigation, so that Exxon will finally have to answer the questions that we’ve asked.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">AMY GOODMAN: And explain what was the smoking gun for you. Why did you get involved with the Exxon probe?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ATTORNEY GENERAL MAURA HEALEY: Well, there was information publicly reported that detailed some of what Exxon’s executives and scientists knew decades ago about what the effect of burning fossil fuels was going to have and going to be on the environment. And based on that information—and there was other information about oil executives flying in regularly to meet with one another to talk about how they were going to handle this as a public relations matter, and concern that there was a cover-up about this information. We were then led to do what we always do, which is, when you’re faced with that kind of information, you ask questions as a state attorney general, because this is a question about: Was there fraud perpetrated on the public, on consumers, on even Exxon’s shareholders? Did they fail to disclose things that they should have disclosed because they knew certain things? And so, that’s what this investigation has been about. Unfortunately, Exxon has taken the tack of trying to stop us, state AGs, from investigating</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">AMY GOODMAN: How?&nbsp; &nbsp; ATTORNEY GENERAL MAURA HEALEY: Well, interestingly enough, they say that our asking questions, our sending subpoenas to them, which is something that we do regularly as state AGs—that’s our job, is to ask questions, to investigate, go where the facts take us. Instead, they sued us, claiming that our investigation interfered with Exxon’s corporate free speech rights. I don’t understand that theory. I don’t credit that theory. But that’s the theory that they’ve advanced. They’ve also, of course, tried to use Congress to shut us down, as state AGs. The House committee has been led by Lamar Smith, has been very aggressive in attempting to subpoena me and really attempting to bully us into stopping us from doing our work. And these are questions that need to be asked, and they need to be answered....</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.ecowatch.com/nafta-renegotiations-2344471752.html</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">8 Critical Changes to NAFTA to Prioritize People and Planet</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By Amanda Maxwell and Anthony Swift</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">President Trump has made renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) one of the main goals for his administration and has recently revealed the general plan to do so.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As this process moves forward, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Sierra Club and our partners across a broad range of sectors are calling on the administration to include eight critical issues among their priorities in changing NAFTA, outlined below. We want to ensure that any new provisions in NAFTA result in a transparent agreement that supports—and does not undermine—a more stable climate, clean air and water, healthy communities, indigenous peoples and good jobs.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the 23 years since NAFTA's signing, the economies of Mexico, Canada and the U.S. have become intertwined and interdependent, with $1.1 trillion in trade moving among the three countries in 2016. During those decades, too, new issues such as climate change, clean energy and sustainability, have moved to the forefront of international relations. So, while it remains unclear exactly how and to what extent the Trump administration will change this accord, there are several critical provisions that should be included to improve the lives of people living and working in all three countries and the environments they depend on.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">NRDC is pleased to ally with 350.org, Center for Biological Diversity, Center for Food Safety, Defenders of Wildlife, Earthjustice, Friends of the Earth, Global Exchange, Green America, Greenpeace USA, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, League of Conservation Voters, Food & Water Watch, Sierra Club and U.S. Human Rights Network in calling on the Trump administration to include the following eight issues among their priorities in changing NAFTA:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1. Eliminate rules that empower corporations to attack environmental and public health protections in unaccountable tribunals. NAFTA's investor-state dispute settlement system allows multinational corporations—e.g. ExxonMobil and TransCanada—to bypass our courts, go to private tribunals and demand money from taxpayers for policies that affect corporate bottom lines. Corporations have used NAFTA to challenge bans on toxic chemicals, decisions of environmental review panels and protections for our climate. They have extracted more than $370 million from governments in these cases and pending NAFTA claims total more than $50 billion. What's more, the cases are heard not by judges, but by corporate lawyers outside the normal court system.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2. Incorporate strong, enforceable environmental and labor standards into the core text of the agreement. To address environmental and labor issues, NAFTA created side agreements which are non-binding and have limitations. As a result, they have been relatively ineffective. To ensure that the new terms of a revised trilateral trade agreement create and uphold a fair playing field for environmental and labor conditions, these two areas must be included inside the core text of the agreement. That means that a country that fails to live up to its environmental obligations will be subject to trade sanctions similar to the existing provisions for violation of commercial parts of the agreement. This will also require that countries live up to existing international agreements and address environmental challenges such as critical conservation challenges related to illegal timber trade, illegal wildlife trade and fisheries management....</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">gorsuch hobby lobby</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://movetoamend.org/gorsuch%E2%80%99s-gory-expansion-corporate-personhood</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Cosponsors: H.J.Res.48 — 115th Congress (2017-2018)All Bill Information (Except Text)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sponsor: Rep. Nolan, Richard M. [D-MN-8] | Cosponsor statistics: 32 current - includes 20 original</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-joint-resolution/48/cosponsors?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22HJR+48%22%5D%7D&r=1</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. McCollum, Betty [D-MN-4]<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>01/30/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Cartwright, Matt [D-PA-17]<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>01/30/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Ellison, Keith [D-MN-5]<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>01/30/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Pocan, Mark [D-WI-2]<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>01/30/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Takano, Mark [D-CA-41]<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>01/30/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Blumenauer, Earl [D-OR-3]<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>01/30/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. DeFazio, Peter A. [D-OR-4]<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>01/30/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. O'Rourke, Beto [D-TX-16]<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>01/30/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Slaughter, Louise McIntosh [D-NY-25]<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>01/30/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Grijalva, Raul M. [D-AZ-3]<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>01/30/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Lee, Barbara [D-CA-13]<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>01/30/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Conyers, John, Jr. [D-MI-13]<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>01/30/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Engel, Eliot L. [D-NY-16]<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>01/30/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Tonko, Paul [D-NY-20]<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>01/30/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Raskin, Jamie [D-MD-8]<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>01/30/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Khanna, Ro [D-CA-17]<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>01/30/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Capuano, Michael E. [D-MA-7]<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>01/30/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Lieu, Ted [D-CA-33]<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>01/30/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Norcross, Donald [D-NJ-1]<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>01/30/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Jones, Walter B., Jr. [R-NC-3]<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>01/30/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Beyer, Donald S., Jr. [D-VA-8]<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>02/01/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Serrano, Jose E. [D-NY-15]<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>02/01/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Huffman, Jared [D-CA-2]<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>02/06/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Norton, Eleanor Holmes [D-DC-At Large]<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>02/06/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Bonamici, Suzanne [D-OR-1]<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>02/28/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Davis, Danny K. [D-IL-7]<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>02/28/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Kilmer, Derek [D-WA-6]<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>03/01/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Adams, Alma S. [D-NC-12]<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>03/10/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Jayapal, Pramila [D-WA-7]<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>03/15/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Fudge, Marcia L. [D-OH-11]<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>03/15/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Walz, Timothy J. [D-MN-1]<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>03/23/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rep. Kind, Ron [D-WI-3]<span style="white-space:pre"> </span>03/23/2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">cf bogus animal personhood arg</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.ecowatch.com/ganges-yamuna-india-human-rights-2323154602.html</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.ecowatch.com/trump-business-leaders-2318342090.html</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">e coal industry has long enjoyed a reputation for callousness. But the new mood exemplified by President Trump has spread to companies that invest a lot of resources in portraying themselves as responsible, sustainable corporate citizens. Take Monsanto.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The company has been engaged in a high stakes effort to maintain its ability to market its Roundup brand of herbicide in spite of mounting evidence that it's safety is uncertain at best. When Roundup's active ingredient was listed as a probably human carcinogen under California's Proposition 65 (disclosure: I co-authored it 30 years ago), Monsanto sued, claiming that it was a violation of the constitution to require the company to inform users and others exposed of the view of international science bodies of its risks.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A California court shot the lawsuit down, commenting that there was no plausible basis for the company's claim that making the company inform the public it was selling them a potentially dangerous chemical was unconstitutional. Then, when Monsanto argued that the documents on the basis of which the judge had ruled against it be kept secret, the judge threatened the company with sanctions and required the documents to be released.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">img]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It became clear why Monsanto wanted the documents sealed. The revealed a sordid history of the company's efforts to keep Roundup's real risks a secret, including apparent collusion with regulatory staff inside the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to head off further research into its dangers.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Monsanto's response? Embarrassment? Hardly. The company proclaimed that it would continue to appeal the case. It insists that Roundups users and other exposed were not entitled to know that international agencies had found that the herbicide was a probable human carcinogen.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">---</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ref</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.ecowatch.com/glyphosate-cancer-kennedy-2199066232.html</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ext week, Monsanto and California's Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) will face off over the agency's plan to list the herbicide glyphosate as a carcinogen. The outcome of this legal battle could have major ramifications to California's long-established regulatory program.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It all started back in Sept. 2015 when the OEHHA issued a notice of intent to list the chemical as known to the state to cause cancer under the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986, commonly known as Proposition 65. The OEHHA determined that glyphosate met the criteria under the "Labor Code" listing mechanism, which directs the office to add a chemical or substance to the Prop 65 list of known carcinogens if it meets certain classifications by the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). The France-based IARC concluded that glyphosate is "probably carcinogenic to humans (Group 2A)" in March 2015.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Monsanto then filed a lawsuit against the OEHHA in January 2016 to prevent the listing, arguing that the Labor Code listing mechanism is unconstitutional because the office delegated law-making authority "to an unelected and non-transparent foreign body that is not under the oversight or control of any federal or state government entity."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Glyphosate happens to be the main ingredient in Monsanto's Roundup, the world's most popular herbicide. The chemical is applied onto "Roundup Ready" crops that are genetically modified to resist applications of the spray. The agribusiness giant has long maintained the safety of their flagship product and has vehemently denied glyphosate's link to cancer and has also demanded a retraction of the IARC's report. The company's lawsuit also cited the OEHHA's own 2007 study concluding that the chemical was unlikely to cause cancer.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In response, the OEHHA filed a motion to dismiss Monsanto's lawsuit. The office asserted in its motion that the listing mechanism "simply provides a way for OEHHA to make the most of scarce resources." According to the motion, IARC's scientific determinations are "the gold standard in carcinogen identification," and are trusted and relied upon by state governments, the federal government and foreign governments alike.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At the upcoming Jan. 27 hearing in Fresno Superior Court, both sides will make their arguments before a judge decides whether to dismiss the case or allow it to proceed.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Monsanto's lawsuit is significant for a number of reasons," Kevin Haroff and Marina Cassio of Marten Law wrote in a blog post. "It raises fundamental issues over how scientific health assessments can appropriately be used as the basis for governmental actions, with broad-reaching implications for both consumers and the overall economy. As a practical matter, it also challenges a key element of a unique California regulatory program that has now been in place for three full decades."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The OEHHA's Labor Code listing mechanism using IARC's classification scheme has been tested in court before. In 2013's Styrene Information & Research Center v. Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (SIRC v. OEHHA), the trial court and appeals court determined that the OEHHA could not just rely on the IARC's classification scheme to list a chemical as a known carcinogen in the state. Rather, the court decided that a listing must always be supported by a finding that the chemical in fact is known to the state to cause cancer. In the end, the OEHHA was required to reevaluate four listed substances and six substances under consideration for listing.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Put another way, an IARC Group 1 or 2A classification decision could create a presumption that a chemical must be listed as a known carcinogen under Proposition 65; however, court decisions construing the application of the Labor Code listing mechanism and similar provisions suggest that at least in some circumstances the presumption should be a rebuttable one," Haroff and Cassio point out.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"This may be important to how the courts will respond to Monsanto's legal challenge to OEHHA's proposed glyphosate listing," the authors continue. "Monsanto's argument that Proposition 65 improperly delegates lawmaking power to IARC assumes that OEHHA plays no independent role in identifying chemicals known to the state to cause cancer using the Labor Code listing mechanism. OEHHA could counter that that it does play an independent role, since under SIRC v. OEHHA, it has an independent obligation to find that there is evidence sufficient to establish that a chemical is 'known to the state of California' to cause cancer."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On the same day of the hearing, environmental lawyer Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the law firm of Baum, Hedlund, Aristei & Goldman will hold a press conference in Fresno in support of the OEHHA. The press conference will take place outside the courthouse at Noon PST and EcoWatch will stream the event live on Facebook.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kennedy and Michael L. Baum, senior partner at Baum Hedlund, will speak in support of the state of California's motion to dismiss the lawsuit. Arturo S. Rodriguez, president of the United Farm Workers of America, will speak in support of protecting farm workers from harmful herbicides and pesticides.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Several of Baum Hedlund's and Kennedy's California Roundup cancer clients will also be speaking at the press conference.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">imh]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Since Monsanto's lawsuit was filed, a number of organizations have intervened on both sides. The organizations that support California's OEHHA include the AFL-CIO, Center for Food Safety, Sierra Club, Canadian Labor Congress, Natural Resources Defense Council and the Environmental Law Foundation.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The organizations supporting Monsanto include California Citrus Mutual, California Cotton Ginners & Growers Association, California Grain and Feed Association, Almond Alliance of California, Western Plant Health Association and Western Agricultural Processors Associations.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The OEHHA has received more than 9,300 written comments in response to the listing. The comments are mostly from individuals and groups supporting the proposed listing. Monsanto, chemical producers and industry groups have also submitted comments opposing the listing. The public comment period is now closed, and OEHHA has yet to take final agency action on the listing.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ref 1</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Corporate Speech and the First Amendment: History, Data, and Implications</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Constitutional Commentary, Forthcoming</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">41 Pages Posted: 9 Mar 2015 Last revised: 14 May 2015</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">John C. Coates, IV</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Harvard Law School</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Date Written: February 27, 2015</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Abstract</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This Article draws on empirical analysis, history, and economic theory to show that corporations have begun to displace individuals as direct beneficiaries of the First Amendment and to outline an argument that the shift reflects economically harmful rent seeking.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The history of corporations, regulation of commercial speech, and First Amendment case law is retold, with an emphasis on the role of constitutional entrepreneur Justice Lewis Powell, who prompted the Supreme Court to invent corporate and commercial speech rights. The chronology shows that First Amendment doctrine long post-dated both pervasive regulation of commercial speech and the rise of the U.S. as the world’s leading economic power – a chronology with implications for originalists, and for policy. Supreme Court and Courts of Appeals decisions are analyzed to quantify the degree to which corporations have displaced individuals as direct beneficiaries of First Amendment rights, and to show that they have done so recently, but with growing speed since Virginia Pharmacy, Bellotti, and Central Hudson.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nearly half of First Amendment challenges now benefit business corporations and trade groups, rather than other kinds of organizations or individuals, and the trend-line is up. Such cases commonly constitute a form of corruption: the use of litigation by managers to entrench reregulation in their personal interests at the expense of shareholders, consumers, and employees. In aggregate, they degrade the rule of law, rendering it less predictable, general and clear. This corruption risks significant economic harms in addition to the loss of a republican form of government.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Keywords: First Amendment, corporations, Court of Appeals, Virginia Pharmacy, Bellotti, Central Hudson</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">JEL Classification: D72, K10, K22, K23, K42, L51</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Suggested Citation:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Coates, IV, John C., Corporate Speech and the First Amendment: History, Data, and Implications (February 27, 2015). Constitutional Commentary, Forthcoming . Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2566785 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2566785</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Corporations like Exxon are using spurious free speech claims to fend off regulation</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Updated by Jeff Clements and John Coates&nbsp; Feb 14, 2017, 8:40am EST</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/2/14/14601932/exxon-first-amendment-free-speech-citizens-global-warming</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Why is the attorney general of Massachusetts, Maura Healey, being forced to justify to a Texas judge why and how she is doing her job?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the latest instance of the corporate takeover of the First Amendment — and other constitutional rights — Exxon Mobil, the world’s largest oil and gas corporation, has invented a constitutional right to obstruct state investigations into allegations of fraud.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Investigations by the Massachusetts and New York attorneys general began late last year after the Los Angeles Times reported that Exxon scientists and executives have known for decades about the connection between fossil fuel consumption and the likelihood of catastrophic changes in the Earth’s atmosphere and climate.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The report alleged that as early as the 1980s, Exxon scientists were warning the company in internal communications that global climate change could "indeed be catastrophic (at least for a substantial fraction of the earth's population)." According to the journalists’ report, Exxon’s internal teams used that information for purposes of assessing the potential for profitable investment in new oil exploration and production. Yet these were the same climate models that Exxon “dismissed as unreliable and based on uncertain science” in statements to investors, consumers, and the general public.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A parallel with investigations of Big Tobacco</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The attorneys general embarked on investigations on behalf of their citizens, asking whether Exxon was guilty of selling products and equity while concealing information about their risks.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The similarity of these allegations to the illegal conspiracy of the tobacco industry — a cover-up of internal corporate knowledge about deadly consequences of continued consumption of its products — did not escape notice. In January 2016, the Department of Justice asked the FBI to investigate whether Exxon should be prosecuted under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, as the tobacco industry was. The investigations by the Massachusetts and New York attorneys general, focusing on whether Exxon had been forthright in its disclosures to investors, soon followed.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Given identified sources and specific studies cited in news reports, it is not surprising that chief law enforcement officers of federal and state governments would investigate. Indeed, it would be extremely troubling if they did not.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But rather than show that the allegations of investor and consumer fraud are baseless, Exxon Mobil is misusing the Constitution to continue to conceal what it knew about the connection between catastrophic climate change and continued fossil fuel use, and when.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It is not uncommon, of course, for companies to resist subpoenas from attorneys general on a variety of legal grounds. For example, Exxon could have filed a motion in Massachusetts asking a judge to set aside the subpoena on the grounds that it was overly broad, and arguing that the investigation exceeded the jurisdiction of the attorney general. (In fact, Exxon did just that, and lost.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Until fairly recently, no US court would have entertained free speech claims by a corporation that wanted to strike down regulation</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But Exxon has gone much further. It has filed a federal “civil rights” lawsuit in its home court of Texas against the New York and Massachusetts attorneys general. The multibillion-dollar global corporation claims that the state investigations violate a previously unrecognized corporate right under the Constitution both to “speak” and to “not speak” about climate change any way it wants, however deceptive that speech may be.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is where the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission is taking the country. That 2010 ruling is infamous for opening the floodgates of big, dark money in our elections by deciding that any limits on supposedly “independent” political ads violate the speech rights of corporations, unions, and billionaires. What is less well-known about Citizens United is how radically it empowers corporations to misuse the First Amendment in other ways — ways we now see playing out in the Exxon case, and elsewhere.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Citizens United was the capstone on a remarkable series of cases, dating only to the 1970s, that revolutionized the application of the First Amendment in the corporate context. Very few people realize just how quickly this constitutional revolution has occurred; very few people realize that American corporations thrived for the first two centuries of American history with virtually no First Amendment protections.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the early 20th century, First Amendment cases involving firms tended to involve media companies, as when Louisiana Gov. Huey Long imposed special taxes on newspapers (a clear attempt to punish them). It was generally assumed that the “speech” of business corporations was no more free from court scrutiny than the language of their contracts or their SEC filings.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That finding was then broadened and expanded in National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti (1978), which held that corporations can contribute to ballot initiatives, and again in Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corp. v. Public Service Commission (1980), which asserted that a utility could run advertisements promoting the use of electricity. Those two cases continue to be cited in almost all commercial speech cases — and they are cited more and more frequently. Citizens United affirmed those cases and extended them to campaign finance laws.After his appointment to the high court in 1971, however, Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr., a former business lawyer who ardently believed that corporate America was being undermined by the public’s support for reformers like Ralph Nader, helped reinvent the Court’s doctrine in this area. In Virginia State Pharmacy Board v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council (1976), the Court said, on First Amendment grounds, that the state could not forbid pharmacists from advertising prescription drug price — a remarkable departure from precedent.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Despite the “free speech” rhetoric, corporations are not simply seeking to offer opinions about public policy issues. They do that all the time, routinely spending millions to fund ads, research, policy papers, and lobbying activities. Today corporations are claiming that their “rights” to speak clash with longstanding forms of regulation of business activity. Whenever they are required to disclose information to consumers, regulators, the public, or enforcement officials, they argue, their First Amendment rights are implicated. Whenever they seek or transmit information, they say, they are “speaking,” and the First Amendment gives them the right to do that without fear of consequences.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A growing number of constitutional challenges to reasonable regulations</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In recent years, large corporations have been emboldened to argue that corporate speech rights entitle them to strike down state health care prescription information laws — those forbidding pharmaceutical companies from selling information about the prescribing patterns of individual doctors, for example.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorrell_v._IMS_Health_Inc.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They have argued that speech rights forbid certain securities regulations — specifically, those requiring investigation and disclosure of whether a company sells “conflict minerals” from the Democratic Republic of Congo.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.fedregsadvisor.com/2014/04/14/d-c-circuit-vacates-dodd-frank-conflict-minerals-provision-sec-rule-as-violating-first-amendment-free-speech/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They have said that the First Amendment gives them a right to decline to say on product labels that the meat they sell comes from foreign countries, or that food products contain genetically modified ingredients.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.ibtimes.com/food-labeling-laws-could-be-undermined-first-amendment-court-challenge-1587213</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a related egregious constitutional expansion, corporations have even attacked minimum wage laws as violating their rights under the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause — when, as is typical, such laws treat firms differently based on size (or form of organization). The corporate misuse of the First Amendment and the Constitution more broadly, has gone viral. It now might be considered corporate legal malpractice not to take a swing at challenging, on constitutional grounds, any law that gets in the way of the largest corporate profits.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2014/10/06/the-fight-for-living-wages-is-for-workers-not-corporations/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Investigations by public agents, including attorneys general, are a necessary component of law enforcement. Efforts by public agents to ascertain facts in such investigations should not create constitutional controversy, provided the agents respect due process and other constraints on how they perform these duties. If corporations can invoke “free speech” as a way to conceal relevant information about allegedly false statements — if they can effectively create immunity from investigation by playing a constitutional trump card — then we are on a slippery slope to the civic incapacity and relative weakness in both rule of law and economic growth that characterizes Russia and other regimes that collapse the distinction between economic and political power.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>That’s why Exxon’s attack on the state investigations says so much about the damage to our constitutional framework wrought by the Supreme Court’s invention of these new corporate rights</b>. In our federal system, attorneys general are the highest law enforcement officers in the state, generally elected directly by people, and charged with protecting the public interest and checking the abuse of corporate power. Yet in the post–Citizens United world, Exxon — with a virtually unlimited budget — can summon any officials with the temerity to do their job into physically distant courts. Trumped-up “civil rights” litigation of this kind has self-evident potential for the harassment and intimidation of would-be investigators.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Even the majority of justices in Citizens United did not argue that corporate speech rights protected fraudulent statements. Yet unless the Court revisits its First Amendment doctrines, Exxon’s attack on efforts by the states to investigate its conduct shows that such nuances may not matter. Whether Exxon wins or loses its “free speech” claims, it has already delivered its real message: Those who stand up for the public interest will face a high cost.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jeff Clements is the president of American Promise, a national nonpartisan group of American citizen leaders working for the 28th Amendment to secure government of the people, not money. He previously was a partner in a Boston law firm and served as chief of the Public Protection Bureau in the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>John Coates</b> is the John F. Cogan Jr. professor of law and economics, as well as research director of the Center on the Legal Profession, at Harvard Law School. Before joining Harvard, he was a partner at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz specializing in financial institutions and mergers and acquisitions.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ref reurters</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">‘Living wage’ law is unconstitutional – if you ask lobbyists</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By Ron Fein October 6, 2014</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;Demonstrators rally to raise the hourly minimum wage to $15 for fast-food workers at City Hall in Seattle</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Industry trade groups are now challenging Seattle’s new minimum wage law as unconstitutional. They claim the city’s $15 an hour rate violates the 14th Amendment. Passed just after the Civil War to ensure equal rights for the newly freed slaves, that amendment says no state may “deny to any person . . . the equal protection of the laws.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to the industry lawsuit, the minimum wage law violates this Equal Protection Clause because it phases in the higher wage at a different schedule for franchised companies than for small local businesses.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But the trade groups’ argument twists the real intent of the 14th Amendment. Its drafters had a special interest in whether workers could earn “fair, living wages,” our research has revealed. That phrase was often used by Senator Jacob Howard, a staunch Republican who served as the 14th Amendment’s Senate floor manager in 1866.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">During congressional hearings, Howard repeatedly asked witnesses whether employers were paying the newly freed slaves “fair, living wages.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Howard had reason to emphasize this point. Even before the Civil War ended, the Union Army was deeply concerned about whether freedmen were receiving fair wages. An 1865 Army work plan, for example, instructed officers to assist freedmen in obtaining “fair wages for their labor.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sometimes it was a struggle to achieve this. When employers in two recalcitrant South Carolina counties persisted in underpaying the freedmen, one Army general contemplated moving those counties’ entire freed population to areas that would pay them “fair wages.” By 1866, a special military unit established to assist freedmen during the post-Civil War Reconstruction had resorted to distributing standard labor contracts, with fixed labor rates, that would promote “prosperous relations between capital and labor” and be “satisfactory to the freedmen.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Many Americans viewed “fair, living wages” as an integral part of the struggle from slavery to full citizenship. The influential abolitionist editor Horace Greeley — famous for his 1865 editorial that advised “Go West, young man” — wrote a widely reprinted open letter to “the Colored People of North Carolina” on September 14, 1865. He urged them to take immediate steps to demand “fair, living wages” as part of their larger struggle for equal rights.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So when members of the special congressional committee asked whether freedmen could earn fair or living wages, they understood the issue as intimately connected with the equality that the 14th Amendment ultimately enshrined.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That wasn’t the only concern behind the 14th Amendment, of course. But, unlike protection of the economic advantages that franchised businesses have over small local businesses, it was part of the 14th Amendment’s overall goals.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Given how important obtaining “fair, living wages” was to the 14th Amendment’s authors, industry lawyers have no basis to argue that the Equal Protection Clause protects the companies, rather than the workers. But it’s not surprising. Ever since the 14th Amendment was passed, corporate lawyers have tried to leverage it to strike down laws like Seattle’s.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 1938, a frustrated Supreme Court justice complained that of the cases in the court in which the 14th Amendment was applied during the first 50 years after its adoption, “less than one-half of 1 percent invoked it in protection of the negro race, and more than 50 percent asked that its benefits be extended to corporations.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Just this year, the Equal Protection Clause has been invoked on behalf of coal companies and multinational agribusiness conglomerates.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We need to put a stop to this unfounded constitutional argument. The businesses had their opportunity to make their case to the city of Seattle — and they lost. They shouldn’t be allowed to run to court under the banner of the 14th Amendment.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When Abraham Lincoln was just a rookie congressman, he wrote that securing “to each laborer the whole product of his labor, or as nearly as possible, is a most worthy object of any good government.” That’s what Seattle’s law does. Sixteen years after Lincoln wrote that, he vowed at Gettysburg to preserve a “government of the people, by the people, [and] for the people.” That’s what the industry’s lawsuit threatens.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The congressmen of Reconstruction sought to carry forward Lincoln’s legacy with the 14th Amendment. Their vision of full equality is not yet realized. But if they could see what Seattle is trying to achieve, they would be proud.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2014/10/06/the-fight-for-living-wages-is-for-workers-not-corporations/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Does Exxon Have a Constitutional Right to Deny Climate Change ...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/06/exxon-ken-paxton-first-amendment</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jun 30, 2016 - Does Exxon Mobil have a constitutional right to sow doubt about climate science? ...Exxon, he wrote, had a First Amendment right to withhold the ... when the government must act toprotect the integrity of the market, even if it ...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Corporations like Exxon are using spurious free speech claims to fend ...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">www.vox.com/the.../exxon-first-amendment-free-speech-citizens-global-warming</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">3 days ago - ... of the First Amendment — and other constitutional rights — Exxon Mobil, ... of American history with virtually no First Amendment protections.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Exxon-Mobil is abusing the first amendment - The Washington Post</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.washingtonpost.com/.../exxonmobils.../2df8b29c-38c4-11e6-9ccd-d6005be...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jun 24, 2016 - The oil giant is brazenly invoking the First Amendment to block a subpoena by state attorneys ... If ExxonMobil has committed fraud, its speech would not merit First Amendment protection. ... Lando unequivocally held that the Constitution does not preclude ordinary discovery of .... Play right from this page ...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Exxon Mimics Big Tobacco's First Amendment Plea</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">www.climateinvestigations.org/exxon_mimics_big_tobacco_s_first_amendment_plea</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Apr 19, 2016 - ExxonMobil raised the First Amendment defense when it sued in Tarrant ... as a violation of ExxonMobil's constitutional right to participate "in ongoing public ... It held that no First Amendment protection applies to Nike's false ...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Exxon Fights Subpoena in Widening Climate Probe, Citing Violation of ...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://insideclimatenews.org/.../exxon-virgin-islands-subpoena-climate-change-invest...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Apr 14, 2016 - ExxonMobil Corp. sued to block a subpoena issued last month by the ... and that it violates the company's constitutional rights and "constitutes an abuse of ... strikes at protected speech at the core of the First Amendment.".</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Exxon and Its Allies Invoke First Amendment to Fight Climate Fraud ...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://insideclimatenews.org/.../exxon-competitive-enterprise-institute-cei-climate-cha...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Apr 22, 2016 - Exxon and Its Allies Invoke First Amendment to Fight Climate Fraud Probes ... the FirstAmendment rights of those who question climate science. ... at protected speech at the core of the FirstAmendment." .... Exxon Fights Subpoena in Widening Climate Probe, Citing Violation of ItsConstitutional Rights.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">3 Reasons We Oppose a Congressional Move to Protect Exxon ...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">www.ecowatch.com/we-oppose-a-congressional-move-to-protect-exxon-1946424984...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jul 27, 2016 - Constitutional Rights Violations ... colleagues bombastically claim that their crusade is toprotect ExxonMobil's First Amendment rights, as well ...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Exxon Corporation v. Eagerton | Oyez</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.oyez.org/cases/1982/81-1020</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Feb 22, 1983 - Exxon Corporation (Exxon), along with other gas and oil producers in Alabama, ... EqualProtection Clause of the 14th amendment and the Contract Clause. ... rights under the Equal ProtectionClause of the U.S. Constitution?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Exxon Tries To Bury Climate Documents By Claiming First ...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">www.huffingtonpost.com/.../exxon-first-amendment_us_571662c6e4b0060ccda46d6...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Apr 19, 2016 - Exxon's invocation of the First Amendment is fairly unusual for a ... But others have tried to defend the oil company's free speech rights on this ...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">First Amendment Freedoms Must Be Protected | The Daily Caller</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">dailycaller.com/.../texas-is-fighting-back-against-the-activist-ags-dangerous-climate-su...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jun 2, 2016 - A view of the Exxon Mobil refinery in Baytown, Texas, in this ... Texas AG's Decision To Fight In Favor Of ExxonMobile's Constitutional Rights?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">on the issues hmn</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.ontheissues.org/2016/Bernie_Sanders_Corporations.htm</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">BERNIE:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Corporations do not have First Amendment rights</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In my view, a corporation is not a person. In my view, a corporation does not have first amendment rights to spend as much money as it wants, without disclosure, on a political campaign. In my view, corporations should not be able to go into their treasuries and spend millions and millions of dollars on a campaign in order to buy elections.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I do not believe that is what American democracy is supposed to be about.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In my view, history will record that the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision is one of the worst decisions ever made by a Supreme Court in the history of our country. While the campaign finance system we had before Citizens United was, in my view, a disaster, as a result of Citizens United, that bad situation has become much worse</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Source: The Essential Bernie Sanders, by Jonathan Tasini, p. 73 , Dec 8, 2011</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Corporate political spending is not free speech.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sanders sponsored Constitutional Amendment to overturn Citizens United</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Constitutional Amendment</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Whereas the right to vote in public elections belongs only to natural persons, so shall the ability to make contributions and expenditures to influence the outcome of public elections belong only to natural persons.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nothing in this Constitution shall be construed to restrict the power of Congress and the States to protect the integrity and fairness of the electoral process, limit the corrupting influence of private wealth in public elections, and guarantee the dependence of elected officials on the people alone by taking actions which may include the establishment of systems of public financing for elections, or the imposition of requirements to ensure the disclosure of [election] contributions and expenditures.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nothing in this Article shall be construed to alter the freedom of the press.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Opponents recommend voting NO because:[Supreme Court majority opinion in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, for which the Constitutional Amendment is proposed as a remedy. The FEC had ruled that the movie "Hillary", released in 2008 to persuade voters against Hillary Clinton, was illegal because it was a disguised campaign contribution made by a corporation. The Supreme Court overruled the FEC]:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Modern day movies might portray public officials in unflattering ways. Yet if a covered transmission [is broadcast] during the blackout period, a felony occurs solely because a corporation, [instead of a candidate or donors, paid] in order to engage in political speech. Speech would be suppressed in the realm where its necessity is most evident: in the public dialogue preceding a real election. Governments are often hostile to speech, but it seems stranger than fiction for our Government to make this political speech a crime. Some members of the public might consider Hillary to be insightful and instructive; some might find it to be [unfair]; those assessments, however, are not for the Government to make.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Source: H.J.RES.34 / S.J.RES.11 14_SJR11 on Mar 13, 2013</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">--</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2012</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/6095:the-problem-with-citizens-united-is-not-corporate-personhood</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2x?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The Problem With Citizens United Is Not Corporate Personhood</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Tuesday, 17 January 2012&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By James Marc Leas and Rob Hager, Truthout | News Analysis</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Florida Rep. Ted Deutch introduced a constitutional amendment in December to overturn Citizens United, one of five decisions since 2006 by which a closely divided Supreme Court vastly increased the amount of corrupting corporate money in elections.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In an opinion piece critical of the decision in Citizens United, Senator Sanders wrote:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When the Supreme Court says that for purposes of the First Amendment, corporations are people, that writing checks from the company's bank account is constitutionally-protected speech and that attempts by the federal government and states to impose reasonable restrictions on campaign ads are unconstitutional, when that occurs, our democracy is in grave danger.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The joint Sanders-Deutch Resolution proposes an amendment to the constitution "to expressly exclude for-profit corporations from the rights given to natural persons." The first section of the amendment states:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The rights protected by the Constitution of the United States are the rights of natural persons and do not extend to for-profit corporations, limited liability companies, or other private entities established for business purposes or to promote business interests under the laws of any state, the United States, or any foreign state.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While Senator Sanders and Representative Deutch correctly characterize the danger to democracy and the need for strong action in response, a close reading of Citizens United shows that constitutional rights of corporations played no role whatsoever in the Citizens United decision.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The incorrect - but widely held - reading of Citizens United is that the corruption of elections arose fundamentally because the Supreme Court adopted a legal doctrine of corporate "personhood" which endowed corporations with First Amendment free speech rights, which, combined with the notion that spending money to promote a candidate is a form of speech, gives corporations the right to spend unlimited amounts of their money in elections. This incorrect reading of Citizens United is compounded by the further error that a constitutional amendment is necessary and sufficient to remove those corporate constitutional rights and to remove corporate money from elections, or could prevent the pro-corporate majority on the Supreme Court from making further decisions corrupting elections.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Fortunately, the inordinate influence of private money in elections can be fixed, and the fix is far easier to accomplish - and more certain of success if accomplished - than any kind of constitutional amendment, as described in "Constitutional Amendment Not Needed: Congress Already Has a Remedy."&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As to corporate rights, what is true is that the legal fiction of corporate personhood was created to apply the 14th Amendment for protecting corporations from certain state regulations and taxes during the first Gilded Age (1870-1900). The 14th Amendment prevents any state from depriving "any person" of property without due process of law or denying "any person" equal protection of the laws.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Under both mass public pressure and pressure from the Roosevelt administration,by 1938 the court generally stopped striking down laws regarding economic regulation on any grounds, and began to elevate protection of personal liberties over property rights. As described in an article about the rise and fall of the corporate personhood doctrine by Carl J. Mayer,&nbsp; "Personalizing the Impersonal: Corporations and the Bill of Rights," 41 Hastings Law Journal 577 (1990), the Supreme Court had fully abandoned the "corporate personhood" doctrine as a means for advancing corporate interests by the 1960s.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Although the 14th Amendment mentions "persons" in several places, the First Amendment - the amendment that the court used for empowering corporations inCitizens United and other election cases - does not even once mention the word "person." As Mayer explained, the use of the "corporate personhood" doctrine was far more persuasive in the context of protecting corporate property rights under the 14th Amendment than when extended to include corporations in the enjoyment of the intangible rights, such as freedom of speech, contained in the First Amendment. Thus, the court took a different approach to expand corporate power that did not employ the legally weak, intuitively unpersuasive and oxymoronic "corporate personhood" doctrine.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Supreme Court did not base its pro-corporate First Amendment decisions on supposed "constitutional rights" of corporations. Instead, it applied novel interpretations of the First Amendment that were independent of the identity of the speaker to open the floodgates of corporate money in elections, thereby turning elections into the high-return investment vehicles they are today.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The novel interpretations of the First Amendment were initiated in two Supreme Court cases decided decades before Citizens United. In its 1976 Buckley v Valeodecision, the Supreme Court equated spending money in politics with First Amendment protected speech and overturned federal limits on expenditures in elections as violating the First Amendment.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Its 1978 decision in First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti was the first case in which the Supreme Court overturned a law that restricted corporate money in politics. In this case, involving a referendum question, the decision rested on the supposed First Amendment right of the listener, not the right of the speaker. The Court clearly explained that it was neither creating a corporate right nor relying on any notion of corporate personhood. In fact, the US Supreme Court shot down the court below for anachronistically framing the argument as one of corporate rights and corporate personhood:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Court below [the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts] framed the principal question in this case as whether and to what extent corporations have first Amendment rights. We believe that the [Massachusetts Court] posed the wrong question. The Constitution often protects interests broader than those of the party seeking their vindication. The first amendment, in particular, serves significant societal interests. The proper question therefore is not whether corporations "have" first amendment rights, and if so, whether they are coextensive with those of natural persons. Instead, the question must be whether [the statute] abridges expression that the first amendment was meant to protect. We hold that it does.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The inherent worth of the speech in terms of its capacity for informing the publicdoes not depend upon the identity of its source, whether corporation, association, union, or individual.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The First Amendment goes beyond protection of the press and the self-expression of individuals to prohibit government from limiting the stock of information from which members of the public may draw.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Expressly following the approaches taken in these two cases, the court broke no new ground in Citizens United when it ruled that:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;... voters must be free to obtain information from diverse sources in order to determine how to cast their votes.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When Government seeks to use its full power, including the criminal law, to command&nbsp; where a person may get his or her information or what distrusted source he or she may&nbsp; not hear, it uses censorship to control thought. This is unlawful. The First Amendment&nbsp; confirms the freedom to think for ourselves.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thus, in Citizens United, the Supreme Court continued to articulate a theory of speech that underlies all the court's decisions allowing money into politics. What was novel in Citizens United was not anything remotely related to corporate personhood, but the court's expansion of the theory it provided in Bellotti from referendum questions to electioneering for candidates. In both cases, the court defined freedom of speech as protected by the First Amendment from the perspective of the listener, rather than of the speaker. The court held that the listener had the right to listen to all sources, whether the sources be corporations, partnerships, other business entities, individuals, associations or nonprofits. The court relied on the phrasing of the First Amendment to rule that Congress could not abridge "freedom of speech" in the abstract, irrespective of the source of the speech or the rights - or absence of rights - of the speaker.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The court could not have made any clearer that the right it defined has nothing to do with the "personhood" of the speaker, the source of the money for the speech or the rights of the source of the money. Citizens United and four other cases were decided after 2006, when pro-corporate justices, led by Chief Justice John G. Roberts, reached a majority of five on the Supreme Court. In these cases, the court combined the "money is speech" theory of Buckley with the "furthering free and open debate" analysis provided for referendum questions of Bellotti to usher unlimited corporate money into electoral politics. Thus, the Roberts 5 employed the more easily defensible abstract "open debate" basis for providing unlimited private money in elections that was created decades earlier, far removed from any reliance on the questionable idea of corporate personhood doctrine and any questions of whether corporations have the same rights as people.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Many may be surprised to learn that no federal campaign finance law has ever been struck down by the Supreme Court on grounds of "corporate personhood" or any kind of corporate rights. The court has consistently hinged its decisions on the First Amendment rights of the listener to hear all sources of the free and open debate and of society to enjoy an abstract "freedom of speech" disconnected from the identity of the speaker.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Citizens United was not the only case in which the Roberts 5 placed their pro-1-percent thumbs on this scale of justice. Of the four other decisions since 2006 in which the Roberts 5 extended the role of private interest money in politics, three had nothing to do with corporations. While the fourth did as much as Citizens United to open wide the gates to corporate money, like Citizens United, it did so without resorting to corporate personhood or corporate "rights." Those four cases seem to have been largely ignored by those inflating the importance of "corporate personhood" as the key problem. Together these cases show that corporate personhood actually has nothing to do with the key problem of money in politics.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The relatively ignored 2011 Arizona Free Enterprise v. Bennett decision, which overturned an Arizona public campaign funding law adopted by referendum, is probably more important than Citizens United. This is because it struck down a way of using public funding to effectively compete with private interest money in elections. The Roberts 5 thus showed they would brook no workarounds of their decisions that have the effect of mandating corrupt elections.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Abolishing corporate constitutional rights or the legal concept of "corporate personhood," as it applies to elections, would have no effect on the court's analysis inCitizens United or any of these other four cases, because none of its decisions mentioned, relied upon or in any way depended on that concept or any rights of corporations. The same is true of all the court's decisions dating back to the 1976 origin of the "money is speech" doctrine. The decision in Citizens United struck down a 1907 federal law which prohibited corporate-sponsored political messages. That law had been adopted after two presidential elections in which massive, corporate-funded electioneering determined the outcomes led to popular outrage against corporate contributions and forced Congressional action.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">No breathing human person with standing in the Citizens United case actually asserted the "right" to have his or her TV programming interrupted to hear a corporate-sponsored political message. This "right" of real living persons to hear corporate electioneering was created by the Roberts Court for an imaginary voter. The court allowed the not-for-profit corporate party in the case to rely on court-imagined rights of real, living human beings who were not parties to the case. So, the court in effect struck down laws embodying the long-standing will of the people without any plaintiff in court asserting an individual right violated by that law. Further, as Justices Stevens, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor asserted in their dissent, the court used the case to "rewrite the law relating to campaign expenditures by for-profit corporations and unions" which also were not parties to the case. In all these ways, the court decision thus violated the Constitution's "case and controversy" requirement. The decision was actually no more than an "advisory opinion," a type of decision the US Supreme Court has no constitutional authority to make. The Roberts 5 thus played fast and loose with constitutional limitations on its powers.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Where the Roberts 5 did "shockingly" break new ground in Citizens United and did reverse clear precedent was in its failure to strike a rational and principled balance between the negligible speech value of private money in elections and the harm such private money causes to the democratic form of government. As stated by Justice James C. Nelson, dissenting from what he considered a futile effort by the Montana Supreme Court to insulate Montana from the pernicious and unconstitutional effects of the Citizens United decree:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Citizens United distorts the right to speech beyond recognition. Indeed, I am shocked that the Supreme Court did not balance the right to speech with the government's compelling interest in preserving the fundamental right to vote in elections. Western Tradition Partnership v. Attorney General Bullock (Montana, December 30, 2011)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Montana Supreme Court articulated the strategic ground upon which Citizens United should properly be attacked - the proposition that money is such valuable speech that the corrupting influence of money in elections can be ignored. By refusing to engage in the usual balancing of First Amendment rights against potential for public harm when performing its First Amendment analysis, the Roberts 5 reversed the court's own First Amendment precedent, as well as the law regarding corporate financing of elections that extended back to the era of Theodore Roosevelt.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For their traditional First Amendment balancing, on one side of the scale, courts have categorized the speech as either a kind that communicates an idea, opinion, demand, information relevant to democratic debate, etcetera, or a kind that better fits the category of being merely an instrumentality of transactional conduct. (The speech can also fall in the middle between these two categories). The more communicative and the less transactional, the more weight the courts have recognized on this side of the scale. On the other side of the scale is weighed the amount of harm done by allowing the speech. Speech that merely facilitates the conduct of transactions, such as fraud, conspiracy, insider trading tips, pimping and so forth may properly be criminalized and regulated without much regard for the fact that the means for carrying out the transactions may be entirely speech. Money in politics falls within the category of transactional speech, and it also causes severe harm to the democratic form of government. It may, therefore, be regulated and criminalized.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Other legal restraints on communicative speech, including judicial gag orders restricting pre-trial publicity and laws prohibiting the publication of the name of a rape victim, similarly are considered to have insufficient value as communication to justify the harm they might do. No one disputes that the clear harms caused by these categories of speech activities may outweigh any communicative value such speech may have.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Citizens United decision is constitutionally flawed for two reasons that have nothing to do with corporate personhood. Each of these flaws provides adequate grounds for Congress to overturn not just one, but all of the Supreme Court decisions relating to private money in politics since 1976.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">First, the Roberts 5 stepped outside the court's constitutional authority by taking up and deciding cases concerning election integrity. Maintaining the integrity of elections was a political question of such importance to the founding fathers who wrote the Constitution that in Article I, Sections 4 and 5, they specifically consigned to the elected Congress both regulation and judging of the manner of holding elections. The founders rightly understood that Congress would be far more subject to popular pressure to maintain election integrity than would the appointed-for-life members of the court. Taking up a case and overturning a law that provides for election integrity infringes a power specifically assigned to Congress, thereby undermining the separation of powers. This also violates the court's own well-established precedent of refusing jurisdiction concerning political questions. The court followed this traditional rule defining the boundary between judicial and legislative issues from the 1803 decision in Marbury v. Madison until the Buckleydecision in 1976. Every decision widening the gates to money in politics sinceBuckley, including Citizens United, has violated the same constitutional principle prohibiting court jurisdiction over such political questions.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Second, even if the court had constitutional authority to take up an issue of election integrity, which it does not, the court overruled a fully supported legislative finding that private money in elections causes sufficient harm to justify its regulation, even accepting the distorted view that money in the form of electioneering expenditures is the kind of speech the First Amendment was intended to protect.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By contrast, the public has a far more profound and compelling interest in preventing the death of representative democracy by allowing continued auction of its elections and laws to wealthy corporations. Corporations profit from the government policies and government contracts they receive in exchange for their payoffs to and for politicians. For example, a study done by Raquel Alexander, Susan Scholz, and Stephen Mazza of the University of Kansas found a financial return on investment of $220 for every dollar spent on lobbying, including election-cycle lobbying. This and other evidence of corruption was found to be unimportant by the pro-corporate Roberts 5 in Citizens United. The court instead willfully misinterpreted the language of the First Amendment as providing such absolute right to an abstract listener to hear corporate advertisements as to overshadow the public's greater interest in preventing private money from corrupting elections and government, disenfranchising the many by the money, and causing elected politicians to divert federal and state money toward their corporate benefactors.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The sterile, highly technical issue of corporate personhood is an antiquated doctrine that played no role in Citizens United or any of the other election cases. From a practical point of view, as the Supreme Court itself pointed out, whether corporations should have First Amendment rights is the wrong question to ask, and, also, the wrong argument to wage. Limiting the scope of who can enjoy speech rights alienates such potential allies as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and diverts energy away from the actual constitutional problems.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A public aroused by and sympathetic to Occupy Wall Street may pressure Congress for an immediately available solution already provided in the Constitution and based on ordinary majority votes, as described in the "Constitutional Amendment Not Needed: Congress Already Has a Remedy" article. Diverting this public into seeking an unnecessary constitutional amendment on an irrelevant issue allows the serious threat to democracy created by the present Supreme Court majority to continue for the 2012 election, and on into the indefinite future.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Consider, also, that attacking the actual First Amendment grounds used by the court demonstrates the gross unfairness of the court's decision. To see this, let's compare a recent, genuine First Amendment issue involving Occupy Wall Street protesters. In addition to their general assemblies, working groups, marches and demonstrations, in which they exercised their pure First Amendment rights of "freedom of speech" and "right of the people peaceably to assemble" the protesters used the extremely effective symbolic communication activity of encampments for discussion and learning by the dispossessed and the committed. The police violently attacked and destroyed encampments and arrested or assaulted many protesters who were clearly exercising rights embodied in the First Amendment.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While this pure political speech and assembly on behalf of the 99 percent has been violently suppressed, the use of money by the 1 percent to influence elections, politicians, policies and contracts for private gain continues under the protection of the Roberts 5. This amounts to one rule for the 1 percent and an entirely different rule for the protesters representing the 99 percent.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The comparison of the treatment of private money in elections with the treatment of Occupy encampments is instructive on both sides of the First Amendment scales. A fair balancing of the respective weights strongly favors protecting the Occupy protesters' First Amendment right to peaceably assemble in their highly communicative encampments that do no harm, while denying the 1 percent a right to corrupt politics with their high-return-on-investment transactional spending on behalf of candidates that are highly destructive to the democratic form of government. Unfortunately, so far, neither municipal authorities nor the Supreme Court has done that fair balancing.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The contrast in application of the rule of law is at the very heart of what Occupy Wall Street is protesting - one law for those in the 1 percent who paid for advertising to have representatives elected into government, and another law for the majority of the governed.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While corporate advertising often works to elect candidates favorable to the corporations, it does not appear to satisfy the democratic aspirations of the public: "the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey&nbsp; finds that just 20 percent of likely US voters say the federal government has the consent of the governed."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Occupy Wall Street has already demonstrated the capability of mobilizing large numbers of people against gross inequality. The gross inequality and failure to apply a consistent rule of law in interpretation and application of the First Amendment to money in politics on the one hand, and to protester's encampments on the other, is a prime example of what they protest.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The urgency of removing private money from elections demands first properly understanding the basis for the court's decisions. It also requires determination not to be diverted by politicians, fundraising public interest organizations or professional activists from using that understanding to create an effective strategy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Fortunately, an effective strategy does not require a constitutional amendment, whether for the irrelevant task of repealing corporate personhood or for the imperative task of excluding private money - not just for-profit corporate money - from elections.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Without the corporate personhood and constitutional amendment diversions, Sen. Sanders, Rep. Deutch and an aroused public can demand that Congress use its existing constitutional powers under Article III, Section 2 to restore the traditional limits on court jurisdiction over the political question of private money in elections. Then Congress will be free to pass legislation abolishing corrupting private finance of elections. While substantial public pressure is still needed for Congress to pass this legislation with ordinary majority votes, the barrier to success is far lower than the third-thirds vote in each house and ratification by three-fourths&nbsp; of the states required for a constitutional amendment. This direct route to restoring government of, by and for the people addresses the actual constitutional problems raised by the court, removes court power to find other creative vehicles to corrupt election&nbsp; and is available now without a constitutional amendment.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ROB HAGER</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rob Hager, a Harvard Law graduate, is a public interest litigator who filed amicus briefs in the Montana sequel to Citizens United [which side?] and has worked as an international consultant on anti-corruption policy. He is currently writing a three-part book assessing proposals for ending the political influence of special interest money. The current draft of the first part, <b>Hillary Clinton's Dark Money Disclosure</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">JAMES MARC LEAS</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">James Marc Leas is a patent attorney and a past co-chair of the National Lawyers Guild <b>Palestine</b> Subcommittee. He collected evidence in Gaza immediately after Operation Pillar of Defense in November 2012 as part of a 20-member delegation from the US and Europe and authored or co-authored articles describing findings, including "Why the Self-Defense Doctrine Doesn't Legitimize Israel's Assault on Gaza." He also participated in the February 2009 National Lawyers Guild delegation to Gaza immediately after Operation Cast Lead in 2009 and contributed to its report,</font><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">"Pillar," is available online.</span></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">BS</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>aei </b>hillary hit 8/16</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.aei.org/publication/a-constitutional-amendment-overturning-citizens-united-really-how/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">One jarring note in Hillary Clinton’s acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention was her statement that she would press for a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission</span>. This 2009 Supreme Court case held that corporations had the same rights as individuals to make statements for or against the election of a candidate for public office. Particularly difficult to understand was her linking Citizens United to the fact that our economy is not functioning well for many Americans.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Taking the last point first, what could be the <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">link between Citizens United and a poorly functioning economy? It’s likely that Ms. Clinton wanted her listeners to infer that corporate power, expressed through independent expenditures—presumably contributions to superpacs or other hidden sources—had distorted the public’s will for the benefit of powerful private parties.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is a peculiar claim to make after almost eight years of the Obama presidency, in which the most significant government actions—the Dodd-Frank Act, ObamaCare, and various tax increases on corporations and wealthy individuals—could hardly be said to favor corporations or business interests generally. It is also peculiar in light of a recent Wall Street Journal report that hedge fund contributions to Clinton superpacs have outraised those to Trump superpacs by a ratio of more than 2000-to-1 ($46.5 million to $19,000).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But leaving aside these anomalies, what is it about Citizens United that has stirred Ms. Clinton to propose something as drastic as a constitutional amendment, especially one affecting the First Amendment’s right to free speech?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Many of Ms. Clinton’s listeners who cheered her idea probably believe that their right to free speech would not be affected by overturning Citizens United</b>. Of course, the language of the amendment would be determinative, but let’s assume it is as simple as adding new language at the end of the First Amendment as it now reads. Thus, the current language “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech,” would be supplemented by “except that corporations are prohibited from making political contributions or supporting or opposing any candidate for elective office.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The New York Times is a corporation, so this language would prohibit the Times from editorializing in favor of or against either Ms. Clinton or Donald Trump.</b> Moreover, it might shut down blogs, or firms like Facebook or Twitter, that are corporate vehicles for the expression of opinions about candidates by others. Clearly, closing down newspapers that publish editorials wouldn’t be satisfactory to many Americans, and if extended to other corporate opinion forums would be highly unpopular among the American people. How, then, could the language be modified to allow the New York Times and other corporations to express their views and still overturn Citizens United?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One way would be to make an exception for media corporations. Such an exception would clearly exempt the Times, but it would also exempt Citizens United, which was simply a corporation that made and distributed a film critical of Ms. Clinton in 2008—in other words, a media corporation by anyone’s definition.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">What is a media corporation, anyway? If an oil company made and circulated a film in support of fracking, or set up a blog on which people could debate energy policies, would it then be a media corporation? If so, it would be easy to escape the new amendment, and nothing would be accomplished by making an exception for media corporations.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Another way to narrow the scope of a constitutional amendment so that it didn’t cover corporations like the New York Times would be to invoke the idea of balance. At one time, on the theory that the airwaves were a limited, government-licensed resource, the FCC required that all political statements for and against candidates over radio or TV had to be balanced. If a station allowed one candidate to speak, then an opposing candidate was required to get “equal time.” Another idea was the so-called “Fairness Doctrine” which required both sides of a major public issue to be presented if one side was covered.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>It is questionable whether implementing such a rule is feasible in today’s world</b>. How would newspapers, magazines, and a zillion blogs have covered all 17 Republican candidates in this year’s primary period? And requiring the Times and others to provide a “fair” appraisal of all four presidential candidates on its editorial pages would be a considerable burden. One of the reasons equal time and the Fairness Doctrine were abandoned during the 1980s was that, to avoid the expense involved, radio and TV stations simply avoided candidate interviews or controversial issues.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So how would a constitutional amendment that would overturnCitizens United actually work? Given the importance of the idea, and the fact that it has been advanced by a person who could be president, it would be fair to ask Ms. Clinton to be more explicit during the coming campaign about her plan for a constitutional amendment.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Peter J. Wallison is the Arthur F. Burns fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. His latest book is “Hidden In Plain Sight: What Caused the World’s Worst Financial Crisis and Why It Could Happen Again” (Encounter</span>, 2015).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.thenation.com/article/california-could-sound-the-loudest-call-yet-for-overturning-citizens-united/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>&nbsp;California Could Sound the Loudest Call Yet for Overturning ‘Citizens United’</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The California Supreme Court clears the way for voters to demand a constitutional amendment to get big money out of politics.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">By John Nichols</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">January 5, 2016</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">prop 49? 59?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ggl suggests good and positive</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/januaryfebruary_2015/features/let_us_now_praise_corporate_pe053466.php</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</div><div><b>Let Us Now Praise Corporate Persons</b></div><div>Citizens United was a bad decision; but the cry of “Corporations are not people!” isn’t helping fix the problem—in fact, it’s making it worse.</div><div>
</div><div>by Kent Greenfield MAGAZINE</div><div>
</div><div>Unpeopling America:: The response to Citizens United has been to destroy "corporate personhood." This could make the situation worse, not better. Getty Images</div><div>The American left is notoriously fractious. But one belief that unites more than most is this: corporations are not people. “Corporations are people, my friend,” said Mitt Romney in 2012, and Democrats skewered his cluelessness. “I don’t care how many times you try to explain it,” Barack Obama said on the stump. “Corporations aren’t people. People are people.” During the 2014 midterms, Massachusetts Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren barnstormed the country to rally the faithful. Her most dependable applause line? “Corporations are not people!”</div><div>
</div><div>The main target of the corporations-are-not-people crowd is the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling striking down limits on independent corporate spending in elections. After that case, groups sprang up to fight corporate personhood. Others rebranded themselves by newly taking aim at it. But they do not limit themselves to attacking the Court’s campaign finance jurisprudence. Most groups make a broader attack on corporations being able to assert any First Amendment speech rights at all; and some have called for disabusing all corporations or businesses of any constitutional right.</div><div>
</div><div>Common Cause, for example, uses Robert Reich to tout its support for “a constitutional amendment declaring that ‘Only People are People’ and that only people should have free speech rights protected by the Constitution.” Public Citizen, the liberal litigation group founded by Ralph Nader, argues that “rights protected by the Constitution were intended for natural people.” Free Speech for People, one of the groups most influential in the anti-personhood movement, is pushing a “People’s Rights Amendment.” A version has already been sponsored in the U.S. Senate by Jon Tester of Montana and in the House by Jim McGovern of Massachusetts. It would declare that “the rights protected by this Constitution” are “the rights of natural persons.” A range of liberal groups have signed on to the anti-personhood project—MoveOn, Sierra Club and NAACP chapters, and steelworker and SEIU locals. By their count, sixteen states and nearly 600 localities have endorsed some kind of anti-personhood amendment. Even in a moment when the progressive left seems otherwise to be fighting rearguard actions, this movement has genuine energy.</div><div>
</div><div>These are my people. Many of the leaders of this movement are friends and respected colleagues. I contributed to Elizabeth Warren’s senatorial campaign and voted for Reich when he ran for governor of Massachusetts. Forty years ago, my coal miner grandfather sat me down and told me how a union had saved his life. As a law professor, I have spent my career as an oddity—a progressive who teaches corporate law, almost always the most liberal person in any room of business law academics. A decade ago, I came up with a novel legal theory that shareholder activists recently put to good use suing the Hershey Company over the use of child labor in West African chocolate cultivation.</div><div>
</div><div>A corporate lickspittle I’m not.</div><div>
</div><div><b>But the attack on corporate personhood is a mistake. And it may, ironically, be playing into the hands of the financial and managerial elite.</b></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">What’s the best way to control corporate power? More corporate personhood, not less.</span></div><div>
</div><div>If you’re shopping for glue sticks or glitter and hearing Christian music over a loudspeaker, you’re probably in a Hobby Lobby store. An arts-and-crafts retailer, Hobby Lobby is a big company, with upwards of 20,000 employees and more than 600 stores. But it’s a “closely held” corporation—meaning its stock is not publicly traded. The stock is owned by members of one family, the Greens of Oklahoma City, who are devout Christians. As enacted, the Affordable Care Act contained a provision requiring the company to provide its employees with health insurance that includes all medically approved forms of contraceptive care. The Greens objected. They believe that four of those methods are “abortifacients,” and claimed that the coverage mandate violated their rights under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.</div><div>
</div><div>When their suit made it to the Supreme Court in early 2014, a group of corporate law professors (of which I was one) filed a “friend of the court” brief arguing against the corporation.</div><div>
</div><div>The brief’s main argument? Corporate personhood.</div><div>
</div><div>Understand that “corporate personhood” simply expresses the idea that the corporation has a legal identity separate from its shareholders. That separateness, the brief pointed out, is inherent in what it means to be a corporation. A “first principle” of corporate law (as we explained) is that “for-profit corporations are entities that possess legal interests and a legal identity of their own—one separate and distinct from their shareholders.” The very purpose of the corporation as a legal form is to create an entity “distinct in its legal interests and existence from those who contribute capital to it.” This separateness means that shareholders are not held liable for the debts of the corporation. That makes it possible for people who do not wish to oversee the day-to-day activities of companies in which they invest—and do not wish to risk every penny they own if the corporation goes bankrupt—to invest in corporate stock. In other words, this separateness is what makes capital markets possible. And capital markets are essential for the development of a vibrant national economy. Beyond that, corporations can exist long after the life of any individual that invests in, or works for, them. This means, as the legal scholar Lynn Stout has pointed out, that corporations provide a mechanism for society to make long-term, intergenerational investments that are not linked to government or a specific family.</div><div>
</div><div><b>It is not an overstatement to say that corporate separateness has been one of the legal innovations most important to the development of national wealth.</b></div><div>
</div><div>The professors argued that this separateness meant that the Greens should not be able to attach their own religious beliefs to the corporation. The reason the Greens had chosen to form a corporation was to be able to operate the business without running the risk of losing their personal assets if the corporation went belly up. They wanted separateness.</div><div>
</div><div>They should not then be able to stand in the shoes of the corporation for purposes of religion.</div><div>
</div><div>The Supreme Court disagreed. It held, 5-4, that the Greens could project their religious beliefs onto the corporation and refuse to provide their employees the required contraceptive-care benefits. Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion is evidence of the Court’s much-discussed pro-business tilt, to be sure. But it’s also evidence that the majority doesn’t understand the basics of corporate law. Its sin was not an embrace of corporate personhood but a rejection of it.</div><div>
</div><div><b>In fact, let us now praise corporate persons.</b></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Consider the Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster. For three months in 2010, Americans woke each morning to the news of another 50,000 barrels of crude spewing into the coastal waters of the Gulf of Mexico. We were justifiably outraged. In a legal system without corporate personhood, the channel for that outrage would be limited to lawsuits and criminal inquiries against individual human beings responsible—managers, workers, and contractors. That’s important, of course. </span>In any legal jurisdiction worth its salt, the search for culpable individuals has to be part of the settling-up of any man-made disaster. But it should not be all. No human being—except, perhaps, Bill Gates—would have enough money to compensate those harmed by a massive disaster like Deepwater Horizon. Because a corporate entity is also on the hook, there’s a chance for something approaching real compensation or real responsibility. Corporate personhood is thus not only a mechanism for the creation of wealth (by encouraging investment), it is also a mechanism for enforcing accountability (by providing a deep pocket to sue).</div><div>
</div><div>The movement against “corporate personhood” does not spend much time talking about these aspects of the concept. When the left cries that corporations are not people, what they mean is that corporations should not be able to claim the constitutional rights that human beings can. Yet even here, there is reason to praise corporate personhood. Remember, the opposite of a constitutional right is a government power. If corporations have no rights, then governmental power in connection with corporations is at its maximum. That power can be abused, and corporate personhood is a necessary bulwark.</div><div>
</div><div>In 1971, for example, the government sought to stop the New York Times, a for-profit, publicly traded media conglomerate, and the Washington Post, which had gone public as a corporation only a few weeks previously, from publishing the leaked Pentagon Papers. The Supreme Court correctly decided that the newspapers had a First Amendment right to publish. That was one of the most important free speech decisions of the twentieth century. At the time, no one seriously suggested that the correct answer to the constitutional question was that the Times and the Post, as corporations, had no standing to bring a constitutional claim at all. (And for those of you saying to yourselves, “Well, this isn’t a good example, since the newspapers are protected by the First Amendment’s press clause”: the Court has never given any greater substance to the press clause not already covered in the freedom of speech. And the current proposals to end corporate personhood do not claim to save media corporations any more than pharmaceutical or oil companies.)</div><div>
</div><div>In 1992, Planned Parenthood won a hard-fought battle to have the Supreme Court reaffirm Roe v. Wade. Planned Parenthood is a corporation; but no one seriously suggested it had no standing to object to limits on its ability to provide abortions. Today, Google and other media companies are fighting government demands to disgorge the contents of their servers. No one seriously suggests that the government’s power should be unchecked because the media companies, as corporations, have no Fourth Amendment rights to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures. Finally, if corporations were not able to claim the Fifth Amendment rights to be free of government takings, their assets and resources would always be at risk of expropriation. The risk of investing in corporations would skyrocket, undermining the reason we have them in the first place.</div><div>
</div><div>In fact, the argument that corporations should never have constitutional rights is embarrassingly flawed. I often think that those who make it are aware of that fact, and are using “corporations are not people” not as an analytic principle but as an organizing and fund-raising tool.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Please don’t misunderstand me. Of course corporations are not genuine human beings. They should not automatically receive all the constitutional rights that you and I can claim. Corporations cannot vote or serve on juries, for example; it does not make any sense to think of corporations asserting those rights, both because of the nature of the right and the nature of the corporate entity. Similarly, the Court has held that corporations cannot assert the Fifth Amendment right to be free of self-incrimination. The exclusion makes sense, since corporations could otherwise evade all kinds of disclosure obligations necessary to make markets work. Can you imagine General Motors having a constitutional right not to disclose safety defects in their cars?</span></div><div>
</div><div>When the time comes, the Court should draw the same line with regard to the freedom to exercise religion. The right is to protect the freedom of conscience, and only actual human beings have a conscience. (And only some of them at that.) There should be allowances for genuine associations of religious people, such as churches. But because of corporate separateness—that is, corporate personhood—it will be quite difficult for companies to show that they are genuine associations of religious people.</div><div>
</div><div><b>Should corporations be able to assert First Amendment free speech rights? The answer depends on the context;</b> that context includes the fact that the corporation is a legal form, but is not completely dependent on it. Sometimes it makes little sense to protect the First Amendment rights of corporations. Securities laws, for example, routinely require corporations to disclose to the public their financial well-being. If you or I were required to reveal our personal finances, we could object to the requirement as coerced speech, a violation of the First Amendment. But corporations’ arguments along those lines would fail, and they should. In fact, in 2011, AT&T asked that information about its finances be excluded from Freedom of Information Act requests, because the statute has an exception for “personal privacy.” The Court unanimously rejected this claim—and Chief Justice John Roberts ridiculed it in his opinion. That exception, he wrote, “does not extend to corporations. We trust that AT&T will not take it personally.”</div><div>
</div><div>On the other hand, sometimes it’s important to protect the right of a corporation to speak, as in the <b>Pentagon Papers case</b>, not because the corporation owns free speech rights but because of the rights of human listeners to listen to what it has to say. This idea—that listeners have a right to hear the words of corporate speakers—is actually a liberal idea. In the 1970s, Ralph Nader’s group Public Citizen brought a First Amendment challenge to limits on commercial advertising. They argued that these laws violated the public’s right to know. Legal scholar Adam Winkler argues that Public Citizen’s advocacy led directly to Citizens United. In his majority opinion in that case, Justice Anthony Kennedy said that the public has a right to know corporations’ views. Public Citizen now decries corporate personhood; if truth be told, it’s their own fault.</div><div>
</div><div>When it comes to campaign finance, I agree with the personhood opponents that Citizens United wrongly expanded corporate rights to spend money on elections. I also agree that the Court’s mistake traces its origins to the 1976 case Buckley v. Valeo, where the Court struck down limits on individual (human) campaign expenditures as violations of free speech. But the problem in Citizens United was not the Court’s supposed holding that corporations are people, and the problem in Buckley was not a supposed ruling that “money is speech.” Both are mischaracterizations, and the critical yelps they attract are poorly targeted in any event. Corporations occasionally say things that matter to voters, even in elections. And while money is not itself speech it is sometimes essential to make speech audible above the din. Giving it, too, can be an expressive act. Imagine if Texas told its citizens they could not contribute to Planned Parenthood or had to pay dues to the National Rifle Association. It would be inane to argue that the First Amendment would not be implicated because money is not speech.</div><div>
</div><div>The left and corporate rights: Left, Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee and publisher Katharine Graham celebrate the paper’s victory in the Pentagon Papers case. The Post parent company had gone public only weeks before. Right, pro-choice demonstrators protect the entrance to a Planned Parenthood clinic. PP, a nonprofit corporation, litigates to protect its right to offer abortion and contraceptive services.</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Nevertheless, there are myriad reasons why a commitment to free speech rights—even corporate free speech rights—should not bar reasonable limits on independent campaign expenditures from both corporations and the super rich.</span> It is not hyperbole to say that without such limits, our democracy is at risk. The billions of dollars flooding the electoral process skew it toward the monied and well heeled, and pervert the nature of public service. The current Court is so enamored with a simplistic, libertarian theory of free speech doctrine that it is blind to those risks. A sane Court could easily construct exceptions to otherwise applicable doctrine to protect the sanctity and fairness of our elections. In fact, Canada’s supreme court has done that very thing.</div><div>
</div><div>But notice something. One can support campaign finance regulation and still acknowledge corporate personhood as well.</div><div>
</div><div>In fact, most of the money flooding into the electoral process isn’t coming from corporations. It’s coming from rich individuals like Sheldon Adelson and the Koch brothers. There is a lot of corporate money, to be sure. Chevron, the most politically active public corporation in 2012, spent $2.5 million in that year’s election cycle; the <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Chamber of Commerce, the largest corporate bundler, funneled over $35 million into various 2012 races. But both were dwarfed by the torrent of individual money. Adelson alone threw almost $93 million into various races during the same period, and the Koch brothers ran a network of shady groups that spent over $400 million.[BUT MUCH OF IT LAUNDERED THRU CORPS?]</span></div><div>
</div><div>The power of corporations is frequently misused, usually to the advantage of the financial and managerial elite. Employees, communities, consumers, the environment, and the public interest in general are elbowed aside in corporate decisionmaking, unless the corporation can make money by taking them into account. Corporations are managed aggressively to maximize shareholder return. As a result, the risks they run—whether of oil spills in the Gulf or of financial crises erupting from Wall Street—are often unrecognized until too late. The executives who run American corporations do not generally think of themselves as having obligations to the public. The social contract of American corporations is pretty thin.</div><div>
</div><div>But these defects of corporate power, fundamental as they are, are not problems of constitutional law or corporate personhood. They are problems of corporate law, and they could be fixed by corporate law.</div><div>
</div><div>American courts forged sweeping protections for corporations during the Gilded Age (see sidebar); the legal fortress was slowly breached during the Progressive and New Deal eras. But in many ways we are back where we started. The Supreme Court is applying twisted ideas of free speech and due process to wall corporations off from accountability. In corporate governance, after a mid-century pendulum swing toward more public-spiritedness, managers and investors are now once again fixated on maximizing shareholder value.</div><div>
</div><div>In the last few years, however, there’s been a pushback—even a small bandwagon—against the shareholder primacy norm. An article in the Harvard Business Review (that socialist rag!) declared in 2012, “There’s a growing body of evidence … that the companies that are most successful at maximizing shareholder value over time are those that aim toward goals other than maximizing shareholder value. Employees and customers often know more about and have more of a long-term commitment to a company than shareholders do.” New York Times columnist Joe Nocera wrote that “it feels as if we are at the dawn of a new movement—one aimed at overturning the hegemony of shareholder value.” An opinion piece in the Financial Times recently argued that “[c]ompanies need a bigger and better purpose than simply maximising shareholder value.” And speaking of socialist rags, a 2011 Forbes article called shareholder primacy “the dumbest idea in the world.”</div><div>
</div><div>The case against shareholder primacy was argued best by Steven Pearlstein last year in the Washington Post. Maximizing shareholder value, he wrote, is a “pernicious” ideology that “has no foundation in history or in law.” He continued, “What began in the 1970s and ’80s as a useful corrective to self-satisfied managerial mediocrity has become a corrupting, self-interested dogma peddled by finance professors, money managers and over-compensated corporate executives.” In fact, he argued, “much of what Americans perceive to be wrong with the economy these days—the slow growth and rising inequality; the recurring scandals; the wild swings from boom to bust; the inadequate investment in R&D, worker training and public goods—has its roots in this ideology.”</div><div>
</div><div>These skeptics are popularizing what a number of legal scholars and I have been saying for quite a while—that corporations should be seen as having robust social and public obligations that cannot be encapsulated in share prices. Now, executives have legal obligations to take account of shareholder interests. Progressive corporate scholars argue that these “fiduciary duties” should be extended to employees and other corporate stakeholders.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">One way to make these obligations operational is to make the decisionmaking structure of the company itself more pluralistic. In a number of European countries, for example, companies have “codetermined” board structures that require representation of both shareholders and employees.</span> Even with these management structures, corporations continue their focus on building wealth—that is the core purpose of the corporate form—but not for a narrow sliver of their investors only. And it works. Germany, where codetermination is strongest, is the economic powerhouse of Europe. A former CEO of the German company Siemens argued that codetermination is a “comparative advantage” for Germany; the senior managing director of the U.S. investment firm Blackstone Group had said that codetermination was one of the factors that allowed Germany to avoid the worst of the financial crisis.</div><div>
</div><div>Notice something. These reforms make corporations more like persons, not less. Human beings routinely balance a multitude of interests—I am, for example, a parent, a spouse, a teacher, a writer. Only the rare oddball—Donald Trump,</div><div>maybe?—behaves as if accumulating money is the paramount and unitary good. Humans have consciences; corporations do not. Left to themselves, they will behave as if profit is the only thing that matters. The best way to constrain corporations is to require them to sign on to a more robust social contract and to govern themselves more pluralistically—mechanisms designed to mimic the traits of human personhood within the corporate form.</div><div>
</div><div>If corporations had these traits of personhood, I would worry less about corporate involvement in the political arena. American corporations have become a vehicle for the voices and interests of a small managerial and financial elite—the notorious 1 percent. The cure for this is more democracy within businesses—more participation in corporate governance by workers, communities, shareholders, and consumers. If corporations were more democratic, their participation in the nation’s political debate would be of little concern.</div><div>
</div><div>But corporate personhood opponents are making these corporate governance reforms less likely. Personhood skeptics often characterize corporations as having a narrow social role; because of that narrow role, the argument goes, they owe it to shareholders to stay out of politics. The famous words of the conservative economist Milton Friedman, that the “one and only social responsibility of business” is to make “as much money as possible,” were long used as the mantra of corporate managers who wanted to be released from any social obligation. Now the opponents of Citizens United are endorsing a similarly narrow view of business as a way to explain why corporations should be exiled from the public square. To fight corporate personhood, they are bolstering shareholder primacy.</div><div>
</div><div>Take, for instance, Justice John Paul Stevens’s dissent in Citizens United itself. He argued, among other things, that corporate speech should be limited in order to protect shareholders’ investments. Shareholders are seen as owners, as “those who pay for an electioneering communication,” and are assumed to have “invested in the business corporation for purely economic reasons.” Stevens argued that corporate political speech did not merit protection because “the structure of a business corporation … draws a line between the corporation’s economic interests and the political preferences of the individuals associated with the corporation; the corporation must engage the electoral process with the aim to enhance the profitability of the company, no matter how persuasive the arguments for a broader … set of priorities.”</div><div>
</div><div>Even more revealing, Stevens cites as support a set of corporate governance principles adopted by the prestigious American Law Institute. The Principles were the product of compromise, both asking corporations to look after shareholder interests and allowing them to act with an eye toward “ethical” and “humanitarian” purposes. But Stevens quoted only the language embodying shareholder primacy: “A corporation … should have as its objective the conduct of business activities with a view to enhancing corporate profit and shareholder gain.”</div><div>
</div><div>Opponents of corporate personhood are following Stevens into the shareholder rights trap. Common Cause now has a “featured campaign” for “strengthening shareholder rights.” The Brennan Center for Justice is supporting a “shareholder protection act” and calls shareholders “the actual owners” of corporations. Professor Jamie Raskin of American University, one of the smartest and most energetic academic opponents of Citizens United, says that corporations should not be spending in elections because, “after all, it’s [shareholders’] money.” This is all shareholder primacy language brought to bear in fighting Citizens United.</div><div>
</div><div>Wall Street loves talk of shareholder rights. Sure, many of us are shareholders through our retirement accounts and the like. But widows and orphans are still the minority; most stock held in American businesses is owned by the very wealthy. (The richest 5 percent of Americans own more than two-thirds of all stock assets. The bottom 40 percent—125 million working-class people—essentially own nothing in terms of stock.) So when opponents of Citizens United focus on shareholder rights, they are singing Wall Street’s tune.</div><div>
</div><div>I wish this shareholder-protective rhetoric was just that, but it’s not. Corporate personhood opponents urge, as an intermediate measure short of a constitutional amendment, that corporations be required to seek shareholder approval before spending corporate money on political campaigns. I myself have been tempted by this position, mostly because such a rule would help ensure that executives do not spend corporate monies on issues and candidates opposing company interests. But that benefit is probably marginal, and comes at the risk of validating corporate involvement in the political process in furtherance of shareholder value and to the detriment of other stakeholders. Corporations could speak out in favor of Wall Street but not employees? That would be worse, not better.</div><div>
</div><div>The efforts of anti-personhood activists are not only in tension with stakeholder theory on the conceptual level. In the political arena, too, a tension exists because the energy for reform is a finite resource. I believe that, in this moment, there is an opening to question the very framework of how we view corporations and their social obligations. But we won’t get anywhere on that front if the progressive left wastes its energy fighting for a constitutional amendment that is unlikely to succeed and would do more harm than good if it did.</div><div>
</div><div>To cure the ills of Citizens United, we should stop fighting corporate personhood. Instead, let’s fight to make corporations more like people.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Kent Greenfield</div><div>Kent Greenfield is professor of law and Dean's Research Scholar at Boston College Law School. He is the author of The Failure of Corporate Law: Fundamental Flaws and Progressive Possibilities and The Myth of Choice: Personal Responsibility in a World of Limits.</div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">pwl memo --></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Another significant shift in the law since Powell’s memo was circulated has been the gradual expansion of corporate constitutional rights (referred to by some business groups as “business civil liberties”), especially in the realms of commercial and political speech. The most infamous example is the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. In the commercial sphere, companies have similarly used corporate speech doctrines to challenge various restrictions on corporate advertising (e.g. direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs for off-label uses), limits on media ownership, and product safety labeling requirements (e.g. cigarettes and genetically modified foods).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Corporate constitutional rights are regularly claimed (with the implicit threat of litigation) in opposition to new or proposed regulations</b>. One recent example came during recent attacks on regulations created by the Dodd-Frank financial reform package, which contained a provision requiring that companies report their use of tin, gold and other minerals that can be traced back to the conflict-ridden Democratic Republic of the Congo. In its comments to the SEC, Tiffany & Co. claimed the SEC rules would “compel speech in a manner that violates the First Amendment.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.<b>breitbart.com/texas/2016</b>/06/16/climate-inquisition-exxonmobil-sues-massachusetts-ag-civil-rights-violations/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Irving-based ExxonMobil Corporation (NYSE: XOM) launched a counteroffensive against the ongoing effort to target American energy companies for presumed politically incorrect viewpoints by left wing attorneys general. The Texas energy giant accused Massachusetts AG Maura Tracy Healey of violating its civil rights in federal court Wednesday.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a strongly-worded, 33-page complaint brought by the Texas energy company, ExxonMobil accused General Healey of violating several civil rights protections and unlawful interstate commerce intervention while colluding with other attorneys general and private third parties. Without a permanent injunction and other granted forms of financial relief from the federal courts, the company expects to only be further harmed, according to documents obtained by Breitbart Texas.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">A critical moment in ExxonMobil’s case civil against General Healey centers on a meeting in March 2015, when she and 19 other attorneys general comprising the “Green 20” declared their collective intent to target the company and others like it with subpoenas and related political actions. The complaint alleges that Healey’s promise of an investigation into the company was prejudiced by her expectation that it would “reveal ‘a troubling disconnect between what Exxon knew’ and what it ‘chose to share with investors and with the American public’.” The pleading repeatedly makes note of Healey and her associates’ political biases as the primary driver for their legal pursuits.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The State of Massachusetts’ effort to probe whether ExxonMobil “committed consumer or securities fraud by misrepresenting its knowledge of climate change” was summarily deemed “a weak pretext for an unlawful exercise of government power to further political objectives,” according to the document. The company claims that it has “for more than a decade” recognized the “risk of climate change and its potential impacts”.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On April 19, ExxonMobil was served a subpoena to further study energy and securities sales potentially occurring within the Commonwealth. The company claims that it neither sold fossil fuel products nor owned and operated a single retail location there in at least five years. Further, it sold no equity to the public there during the same time period. The complaint argues that the demands for documents related to activities outside of the Commonwealth were out of bounds.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">General Healey’s “effort to silence, intimidate, and deter those possessing a particular viewpoint” rises to the level of a claimed First Amendment violation, according to the court filing. ExxonMobil argues that Massachusetts’ 40-year timeline for document demands “constitutes an abusive fishing expedition” in violation of its Fourth Amendment protections while Healey’s public commentary about the company presents an addition due process concern – leaving ExxonMobil doubting it is on the receiving end of a “disinterested prosecution”. The company raises additional issues of interstate commerce regulation and procedural violations as well.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The lawsuit hopes to halt the enforcement of Massachusetts’ subpoena and be granted other forms of relief the court feels ExxonMobil is entitled to, including the costs of litigation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The Irving company’s docket is not limited to Massachusetts, however. Breitbart Texas previously reported on how Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton moved to intervene in a then-state court battle brought by the U.S. Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude Walker in May.</span> Texas decried the Virgin Islands’ similar “abusing the power of the subpoena” and warned that if left unchecked, “anyone can be criminally investigated” for viewpoints not acceptable to incumbent political powers. In response, the Virgin Islands relocated its case to a federal district court, where the parties continue to disagree on jurisdiction and venue for the matter, according to the complaint.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Outside of the courtroom, ExxonMobil has been fending off attempts from <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">activist </span>investors to force internal climate policy reforms.</b> A May 2016 shareholders meeting ended when investors voted in large margins against the hiring of new climate experts and hydraulic fracturing (fracking) disclosures, according to a separate Breitbart Texas report.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">California Attorney General Kamala Harris, a U.S. Senate candidate and member of the Green 20, recently brought criminal charges against Houston-based Plains All-American Pipeline L.P. (NYSE: PAA) after a leak was discovered downstream from ExxonMobil plants near Refugio State Beach.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ExxonMobil’s lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Fort Worth Division. A copy of the complaint has been provided below.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Logan Churchwell is a founding member of the Breitbart Texas team. You can follow him on&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">New York became the 17th state to call for a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United—and the first state legislature with Republican control in either House to do so. And in California, voters will finally be able to decide on a ballot measure calling for a 28th Amendment, now that Governor Jerry Brown has allowed SB 254 to become law.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">exxon knew:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“The chilling effect of this inquiry, which discriminates based on viewpoint to target one side of an ongoing policy debate, strikes at protected speech at the core of the First Amendment,” wrote Wells and the Exxon legal team.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The Virgin Islands rebutted Wells and Exxon in an April 25 response.</b>&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Your argument that this investigation targets protected speech mirrors arguments that were decisively rejected in the United States’s case against tobacco, which held tobacco companies financially responsible for and imposed sweeping injunctive relief to address a decades-long scheme by those defendants to misrepresent the scientific facts regarding smoking,” reads the letter signed by Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude Earl Walker. “If ExxonMobil knowingly deceived consumers and investors about climate change, it, too, is not above the law.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Numerous conservative groups — some with ties to the climate change denial echo chamber such as Koch-funded groups like Competitive Enterprise Institute, Pacific Legal Foundation, and Heritage Foundation — have also called the Virgin Islands subpoena a First Amendment attack.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So too did the editorial boards of the Wall Street Journal and the National Review Magazine. The Free Speech in Science Project, a group whose funding stream has yet to be revealed, has also pushed a First Amendment argument.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">AN</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.alternet.org/environment/<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">exxon-using-tobaccos-failed-free-speech-defense-decades-deception-climate-change</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The past week has seen a barrage of opinion pieces carrying water for the fossil fuel industry, defending against the ongoing fraud investigations. The <b>Washington Post had two pieces,</b> Newsweek had one and the Financial Times had an editorial, in addition to op-eds in a couple of other conservative outlets. Of those six, half were penned by groups funded at least in part by fossil fuel companies.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The arguments are all by and large the same, claiming that the investigations infringe on fossil fuels companies’ right to free speech while steadfastly ignoring the fact that ExxonMobil funded climate denial to protect their business model. Only the Financial Times editorial actually acknowledges the “misleading claims from fossil fuel interests and their allies” but concludes that it is “because the stakes [of the debate] are so high that all arguments must be heard.” While that sounds fair at first Glantz, it quickly sounds silly when applied to a recent example: the tobacco industry’s denial of the fact that its carcinogenic product is addictive.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">All but one of the pieces similarly ignored the tobacco industry precedent and the only person who mentioned it was one of the few voices not plugged into the professional denial apparatus.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>As for the pros, Newsweek ran a blog post from the Hoover Institution,</b> which rambled on about climate science that’s supposedly still uncertain, lamenting that fair debate is impossible if one side can bring the other to court. Not mentioned is how a fair debate can be possible if one side launches multi-million dollar PR campaigns to mislead the public about the science.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Feds Refer Exxon #Climate Investigation to FBI: https://t.co/MS5BfY7PNp via @EcoWatch pic.twitter.com/mBWybUPmVb</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">— DeSmogBlog (@DeSmogBlog) March 7, 2016</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Heritage’s <b>Hans von Spakovsky’s piece in the Washington Times misses the tobacco precedent,</b> but went all the way back to the Spanish Inquisition for his First Amendment fear mongering.<b> George Will used his column in the Washington Post</b> to offer a lesson on how this campaign is part of a larger progressive strategy to shut down debate.</span> But apparently it’s Will that needs a history lesson, as he uses as evidence a story about a 2013 IRS investigation accusing the agency of targeting conservatives. But that investigation “found no evidence” that the IRS actions were politically motivated. No doubt his column is similarly bereft of evidence.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The Washington Post also gave space to the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) to defend itself by pretending it is being investigated for political dissent, not its years of Exxon funding for climate denial.</span> Worth noting CEI’s careful phrasing about its relationship with Exxon, which CEI says “publicly ended its support for us after 2005.” With Donors Trust and others making it possible to anonymize giving, the key word is “publicly.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Ironically,</b> despite the admission that its Exxon funding is a perfectly legitimate reason to look into its communications, CEI considers its subpoena to be a fishing expedition<b>. Meanwhile, CEI’s own coal-funded Chris Horner continues to engage in nuisance FOIAs for climate scientists.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Exxon’s defense is a hot topic in denierland, as it advances the narrative that the fossil fuel industry is an embattled population facing government persecution. But here’s a reality check: Before Honduran activist Berta Cáceres was murdered on March 2, she reported receiving 33 death threats after years of intimidation. Instead of investigating a man who had previously bragged about his plans to murder her, authorities claim the prime suspects are two of her fellow activists.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Heartbreaking! @GoldmanPrize Activist Berta Cáceres Murdered in Honduras https://t.co/Zj97cmwQi3 @FoEint @greenpeace pic.twitter.com/tAujvEGtMR</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">— EcoWatch (@EcoWatch) March 3, 2016</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Looks like the fossil fuel industry isn’t the one facing persecution after all.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">jaron against corp personhood?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.alternet.org/environment/cop21-international-rights-nature-tribunal-finds-corporations-governments-guilty-crimes</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">history:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">LEGAL</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">NCLC</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Huge corporations, including Powell’s Philip Morris, invested millions of dollars in the Chamber of Commerce’s National Chamber Litigation Center</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Chavern is also founder and president of the Chamber’s Center for Women in Business.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">CORP PERSON</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Here Come the Foundations</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Despite the Rehnquist dissents, Powell’s vision of an unregulated corporate political “marketplace,” where corporations are freed by activist courts from the policy judgment of the majority of people, won out. Powell, of course, could not have acted alone. He could not have moved a majority of the Court to create corporate rights if no one had listened to his advice to organize corporate political power to demand corporate rights. Listen they did — with the help of just the sort of massive corporate funding that Powell proposed.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Corporations and corporate executives funded a wave of new “legal foundations” in the 1970s. These legal foundations were intended to drive into every court and public body in the land the same radical message, repeated over and over again, until the bizarre began to sound normal: corporations are persons with constitutional rights against which the laws of the people must fall.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Huge corporations, including Powell’s Philip Morris, invested millions of dollars in the Chamber of Commerce’s National Chamber Litigation Center and other legal foundations to bring litigation demanding new corporate rights.</b> <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In rapid succession, corporations and supporters funded the Pacific Legal Foundation, the Mid-Atlantic Legal Foundation, the Mid-America Legal Foundation, the Great Plains Legal Foundation (Landmark Legal Foundation), the Washington Legal Foundation, the Northeastern Legal Foundation, the New England Legal Foundation, the Southeastern Legal Foundation, the Capital Legal Center, the National Legal Center for the Public Interest, and many others.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>These foundations began filing brief after brief challenging state and federal laws across the country, pounding away at the themes of corporations as “persons,” “speakers” and holders of constitutional rights.</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> Reading their briefs, one might think that the most powerful, richest corporations in the history of the world were some beleaguered minority fighting to overcome oppression. The foundations and the corporate lawyers argued that “corporations are persons” with the “liberty secured to all persons.” They used new phrases like “corporate speech,” the “rights of corporate speakers,” and “the corporate character of the speaker.” They demanded, as if to end an unjust silence, “the right of corporations to be heard” and “the rights of corporations to speak out.”</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">This corporate campaign sought to redefine the very role of corporations in American society. The message was insistent: We should no longer think of corporations as useful but potentially insidious industrial economic tools. We should no longer be concerned that corporations might leverage massive economic power into massive political power or trample the public interest for the profit of the few. Instead, we should think of corporations as pillars of liberty, institutions that Americans can trust. They would protect our freedom for us. They would stand up to “bad” government for us.[cue pentagon papers ploy]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">A 1977 brief of the Chamber of Commerce, for example, argued that the Court should strike down a state law that limited corporate political spending in citizens’ referendum elections because corporations help maintain our freedoms: <b>“Business’s social role is to provide the people a valuable service which helps maintain their freedoms. </b>… The statute at issue prevents the modern corporation from fulfilling a major social obligation. … ”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">By 1978, the millions of dollars invested in the radical corporate rights campaign began to pay off. The first major victory for the corporate rights advocates came in 1978, with a corporate attack on a Massachusetts law in First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti</span>. Several international corporations — including Gillette, the Bank of Boston, and Digital Equipment Corporation — filed a lawsuit after the people of Massachusetts banned corporate political spending intended to influence a citizen referendum. <b>Justice Lewis Powell cast the deciding vote and wrote the 5–4 decision wiping off the books the people’s law intended to keep corporate money out of citizen ballot questions</b>. For the first time in American history, corporations had successfully claimed “speech” rights to attack laws regulating corporate money in our elections.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">With that success, an emboldened corporate rights campaign next attacked energy and environmental laws. In the 1982 case of Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corporation v. Public Service Corporation of New York, utility corporations and the array of corporate legal foundations all argued that a New York law prohibiting utility corporations from promoting energy consumption violated the corporations’ rights of free speech. The corporations won again, and again Justice Powell wrote the decision for the activist Supreme Court that he had imagined in his 1971 Chamber of Commerce memo. The corporate interest in promoting energy consumption for corporate profit trumped the people’s interest in energy conservation. Over a period of six years, Justice Powell wrote four key corporate rights decisions for the Supreme Court. These unprecedented cases transformed the people’s First Amendment speech freedom into a corporate right to challenge public oversight and corporate regulation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">msnbc</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">CoC</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A new report by the Constitutional Accountability Center (CAC), a liberal judicial group, at which msnbc got an exclusive first look, finds that<b> since the start of the Roberts Court in 2005, the Chamber has won more than two-thirds of the cases in which it’s gotten involved.</b> And this term, it has weighed in to support corporate interests in nearly a quarter of the cases heard by the nation’s highest court. Just as important, it’s been more active than any other organization in working to shape the court’s agenda by pushing it to take up favored cases.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The Chamber is not just winning more cases, they’re participating in more cases,” Doug Kendall, CAC’s founder and president, told msnbc. ”So the impact of their litigation is far beyond what it used to be.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The major result of the Chamber’s success, legal scholars say, has&nbsp; been a string of rulings that threaten to block the courthouse door to ordinary Americans looking to hold corporations accountable. And with court-watchers’ attention focused on higher-profile gay marriage and voting rights cases this term, it’s a development that’s flown largely under the radar....</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Justices typically grant around 75 or 80 out of roughly 8,000 petitions submitted. And when they’re deciding which ones, amicus briefs from well-known players like the Chamber offer a “helpful signal” for the court, David L. Franklin, an associate professor at the DePaul College of Law, and the author of a 2009 study of the Chamber’s record at the Roberts Court, told msnbc.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Between May 2009 and August 2012, the business lobby filed 54 amicus briefs at the cert. stage—that is, when the court is considering which cases to take up—far more than any other private organization, SCOTUSblog reported earlier this month. And it succeeded in convincing the Justices to take the case in nearly a third of those instances—a better success rate than that of any other group that filed more than ten briefs.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“They are very much shaping the diet of cases that goes before the Supreme Court each term,” said Kendall. “And then once they get a case before the court they usually win it.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>And its success rate before the Roberts Court rivals—and this past term has outstripped—that of the solicitor general.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In fact, the NCLC’s roster of wins before the 2010–11 Supreme Court term reads like a top ten list of the corporate world’s efforts to strangle working Americans and maximize profits</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">. Its victories included</span><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> thwarting class-action claims of gender discrimination at Wal-Mart</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">;</span><b style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> forcing individuals to have their claims against big corporations settled in arbitration rather than gaining access to the courts;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);"> beating back litigation by states and municipalities seeking to regulate greenhouse gases</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">;</span></font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> defeating claims for damages caused by the defective design of vaccines; limiting recovery by whistleblowers; restricting the reach of US law over foreign manufacturers of defective products; and blocking suits by private citizens against brokerage firms for making false statements about securities.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;LA hotel living wage = prot</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;http://freespeechforpeople.org/corporate-constitutional-litigation-beats-a-hasty-retreat-in-los-angeles/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">wa mo?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">January/February 2015</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Corporate Law’s Original Sin</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">by<b> Kent Greenfield</b> MAGAZINE</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Player with railroads: After a fatal train collision in 1882, a reporter asked the tycoon William Henry Vanderbilt about safety on his lines. “The public be damned!” he snapped.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The public be damned,” railroad magnate William Henry Vanderbilt snorted at a reporter in 1882. The impertinent scribe had asked whether Vanderbilt ran his railroads with an eye toward public benefit. At the time, Vanderbilt was among the most powerful men in American business—and by his own estimation the richest man in the world. His figurative middle finger to the American public was big news, appearing on the front page of hundreds of newspapers within twenty-four hours.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The week before his comment, two trains had collided on his railroad inside the Fourth Avenue tunnel in New York City, killing two passengers and injuring hundreds. Many New Yorkers blamed the accident on Vanderbilt’s unwillingness to cut into profits by spending money on safety measures. His contemptuous words, spoken as he dined in his private train car, salted an open wound. The satirical magazine Puck ran a cover cartoon of a ballooned, profligate Vanderbilt wearing a diamond pin, smoking a stogie, and leaning back in a leather chair with a foot on the throat of an eagle dressed in Uncle Sam garb.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Impolitic as it was, Vanderbilt’s comment embodied the business and political philosophy of the monied classes of the Gilded Age. And for the most part, the law was a willing ally. The Supreme Court of the era repeatedly stepped in to protect business from regulatory obligations. Its most famous decision of this kind was the 1905 case Lochner v. New York, striking down a law establishing a sixty-hour maximum workweek for bakers. New York’s law was part of a broader effort of relatively meek legislative initiatives that included minimum wage laws and bans of child labor. The Court’s libertarian reasoning undermined any regulatory protections of employees or consumers. Attempts to constrain corporate power with the use of regulation would be struck down, in the Court’s words, as “an illegal interference with the rights of individuals.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The “Lochner era</b>” lasted for nearly half a century; it did significant harm. Attempts to protect consumers, children, and immigrant workers were thwarted by free market ideology masquerading as constitutional law. The Lochner constitution was a Social Darwinist law of the jungle. Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle—a wilderness of unregulated greed and contempt for the public—was what we got.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But constitutional law was not the only problem. Corporate law, too, helped to keep corporations with a narrow set of obligations. A fight between Henry Ford and his rivals John and Horace Dodge gave rise to the pivotal articulation of the rule.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the second decade of the twentieth century, Henry Ford was making money—an incredible fortune of money—making cars. Ford Motor Company, the company in which he was the dominant shareholder, was selling his masterpiece</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Model T as quickly as it could be produced. By the middle of the decade, the company was doing so well that shareholders were receiving each month in scheduled dividends an amount equal to their initial investment. The company also declared “special” dividends for several years, as much as $11 million in 1914.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Today, we are well aware of the dark side of Henry Ford’s influence—his funding of anti-Semitic propaganda, his financial support for Hitler. But in the teens and twenties, Ford cultivated an image of a benevolent mogul. He made headlines in 1914 with his “Five-Dollar Day,” when he doubled the wages of all his workers, explaining to the New York Times that companies had a direct role in improving the lives of the working class. His rhetoric sounded radical: “I believe it is better for the nation, and far better for humanity, that between 20,000 and 30,000 people should be contented and well fed than that a few millionaires should be made.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 1916, Ford declared that special dividends had come to an end. He wanted the money to build a new auto manufacturing facility, to be the largest in the world. (The factory that was eventually built, the River Rouge plant, built everything from Model As in the 1920s to Mustangs in the 2000s. A facility on site assembles F150 trucks even now.) Ford brashly claimed that his decision was motivated by a desire to do social good for the company’s employees and customers, arguing that shareholder gain was not the purpose of a successful business but its by-product. A business was about more than making money for shareholders, he said. It was about satisfying the obligations of a robust social contract, doing “as much good as we can, everywhere, for everybody concerned … [a]nd incidentally to make money.” Ford demoted the role of shareholders and promoted the status of workers, saying in an interview with a local newspaper reporter that the profits earned by shareholders had been “awful” and that he wanted to drive down the price of his cars so more benefits could flow to “users and laborers.”[see doug ggl bus]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The shareholders were not amused. Particularly upset were the Dodge brothers, John and Horace, who owned 10 percent of Ford stock. Though they had already made more than a 40,000 percent return on their initial $10,000 investment, they sued for more, asking the Michigan courts to force the board of Ford Motor Company to declare a special dividend. It was a crafty demand. The brothers ran the car company that bore their name, a rival to Ford. An extraordinary dividend from Ford Motor Company would both drain it of its financial surplus and provide cash to capitalize the Dodges’ own competing car company.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Henry Ford understood as much. He had no reason to fill the coffers of a competitor, and numerous solid business reasons to keep the capital in-house and keep his customers and employees happy. But instead of defending his refusal to issue special dividends as an exercise of his considered business judgment, which was both true and something that would have easily won the deference of a court, Ford defended his actions by relegating shareholder interests and bringing workers’ rights to the forefront: “My ambition is to employ still more men, to spread the benefits of this industrial system to the greatest possible number, to help them build up their lives and their homes. To do this we are putting the greatest share of our profits back in the business.” The Dodge brothers seized on that rhetoric as evidence that Ford was using the company to further his own social agenda.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The case eventually made it to the Michigan Supreme Court. Ford’s assertions of worker rights and shareholder subordination—in an era when the Russian Revolution had already begun and socialism was on the rise in the United States—were too much for the state court to endorse. Legal scholar Todd Henderson explains that “if a firm as large and important to the American economy were permitted to pursue an overtly socialist strategy, the political impact and the effect on other firms could be enormous.” On the surface, the case was about whether shareholders were due some dividends. But more fundamentally, Henderson says, it was a “test case of the foundations on which American capitalism would be built.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The eventual decision was, and still stands for, an iconic statement that corporations have no obligations beyond the bottom line. In one of the most famous passages in the history of corporate law, the Michigan supreme court announced,</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A business corporation is organized and carried on primarily for the profit of the stockholders. The powers of the directors are to be employed for that end. The discretion of directors is to be exercised in the choice of means to attain that end, and does not extend to a change in the end itself, to the reduction in profits, or to the nondistribution of profits among stockholders in order to devote them to other purposes.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Courts, then and now, follow something called the “business judgment rule”—meaning that they did not, and still do not, typically overturn the considered decisions of corporate managers. But Ford’s rhetoric of worker and customer protection was so radical that it moved the court to rule such motivation out of bounds. Dodge v. Ford was a pivotal moment in the development of corporate law. It defined the core purposes of corporations as being distinct from—even contrary to—the interests of workers, customers, and society. The case remains, a century later, as one of the first opinions law students read in their introductory business law course. It is corporate law’s original sin. —K.G.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kent Greenfield</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kent Greenfield is professor of law and Dean's Research Scholar at Boston College Law School. He is the author of The Failure of Corporate Law: Fundamental Flaws and Progressive Possibilities and The Myth of Choice: Personal Responsibility in a World of Limits.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>2016 Washington Monthly</b>.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2x</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Corporate Personhood: Why It’s a Good Thing</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Citizens United was a bad decision, but the cry of “Corporations are not people!” isn’t helping fix the problem — in fact, it’s making it worse.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Summer 2015</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.utne.com/politics/corporate-personhood-zm0z15uzsau.aspx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By Kent Greenfield, from Washington Monthly</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Corporate personhood is thus not only a mechanism for the creation of wealth (by encouraging investment), it is also a mechanism for enforcing accountability (by providing a deep pocket to sue).&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The American left is notoriously fractious. But one belief that unites more than most is this: Corporations are not people. “Corporations are people, my friend,” said Mitt Romney in 2011, and Democrats skewered his cluelessness. “I don’t care how many ways you try to explain it,” Barack Obama said on the stump. “Corporations aren’t people. People are people.” During the 2014 midterms, Massachusetts Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren barnstormed the country to rally the faithful. Her most dependable applause line? “Corporations are not people!”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The main target of the corporations-are-not-people crowd is the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling striking down limits on independent corporate spending in elections. After that case, groups sprang up to fight corporate personhood. Others rebranded themselves by newly taking aim at it. But they do not limit themselves to attacking the Court’s campaign finance jurisprudence. Most groups make a broader attack on corporations being able to assert any First Amendment speech rights at all; and some have called for disabusing all corporations or businesses of any constitutional right.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Common Cause, for example, uses Robert Reich to tout its support for “a constitutional amendment declaring that ‘Only People are People’ and that only people should have free speech rights protected by the Constitution.” Public Citizen, the liberal litigation group founded by Ralph Nader, argues that “rights protected by the Constitution were intended for natural people.” Free Speech for People, one of the groups most influential in the anti-personhood movement, is pushing a “People’s Rights Amendment.” A version has already been sponsored in the U.S. Senate by Jon Tester of Montana and in the House by Jim McGovern of Massachusetts. It would declare that “the rights protected by this Constitution” are “the rights of natural persons.” A range of liberal groups have signed on to the anti-personhood project—MoveOn, Sierra Club and NAACP chapters, and steelworker and SEIU locals. By their count, 16 states and nearly 600 localities have endorsed some kind of anti-personhood amendment. Even in a moment when the progressive left seems otherwise to be fighting rearguard actions, this movement has genuine energy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">These are my people. Many of the leaders of this movement are friends and respected colleagues. I contributed to Elizabeth Warren’s senatorial campaign and voted for Reich when he ran for governor of Massachusetts. Forty years ago, my coal miner grandfather sat me down and told me how a union had saved his life. As a law professor, I have spent my career as an oddity—a progressive who teaches corporate law, almost always the most liberal person in any room of business law academics. A decade ago, I came up with a novel legal theory that shareholder activists recently put to good use suing the Hershey Company over the use of child labor in West African chocolate cultivation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A corporate lickspittle I’m not.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But the attack on corporate personhood is a mistake. And it may, ironically, be playing into the hands of the financial and managerial elite.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What’s the best way to control corporate power? More corporate personhood, not less.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If you’re shopping for glue sticks or glitter and hearing Christian music over a loudspeaker, you’re probably in a Hobby Lobby store. An arts-and-crafts retailer, Hobby Lobby is a big company, with upwards of 20,000 employees and more than 600 stores. But it’s a “closely held” corporation—meaning its stock is not publicly traded. The stock is owned by members of one family, the Greens of Oklahoma City, who are devout Christians. As enacted, the Affordable Care Act contained a provision requiring the company to provide its employees with health insurance that includes all medically approved forms of contraceptive care. The Greens objected. They believe that four of those methods are “abortifacients,” and claimed that the coverage mandate violated their rights under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When their suit made it to the Supreme Court in early 2014, a group of corporate law professors (of which I was one) filed a “friend of the court” brief arguing against the corporation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The brief’s main argument? Corporate personhood.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Understand that “corporate personhood” simply expresses the idea that the corporation has a legal identity separate from its shareholders. That separateness, the brief pointed out, is inherent in what it means to be a corporation. A “first principle” of corporate law (as we explained) is that “for-profit corporations are entities that possess legal interests and a legal identity of their own—one separate and distinct from their shareholders.” The very purpose of the corporation as a legal form is to create an entity “distinct in its legal interests and existence from those who contribute capital to it.” This separateness means that shareholders are not held liable for the debts of the corporation. That makes it possible for people who do not wish to oversee the day-to-day activities of companies in which they invest—and do not wish to risk every penny they own if the corporation goes bankrupt—to invest in corporate stock. In other words, this separateness is what makes capital markets possible. And capital markets are essential for the development of a vibrant national economy. Beyond that, corporations can exist long after the life of any individual that invests in, or works for, them. This means, as the legal scholar Lynn Stout has pointed out, that corporations provide a mechanism for society to make long-term, intergenerational investments that are not linked to government or a specific family.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It is not an overstatement to say that corporate separateness has been one of the legal innovations most important to the development of national wealth.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The professors argued that this separateness meant that the Greens should not be able to attach their own religious beliefs to the corporation. The reason the Greens had chosen to form a corporation was to be able to operate the business without running the risk of losing their personal assets if the corporation went belly up. They wanted separateness.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They should not then be able to stand in the shoes of the corporation for purposes of religion.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Supreme Court disagreed. It held, 5-4, that the Greens could project their religious beliefs onto the corporation and refuse to provide their employees the required contraceptive-care benefits. Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion is evidence of the Court’s much-discussed pro-business tilt, to be sure. But it’s also evidence that the majority doesn’t understand the basics of corporate law. Its sin was not an embrace of corporate personhood but a rejection of it.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In fact, let us now praise corporate persons.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Consider the Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster. For three months in 2010, Americans woke each morning to the news of another 50,000 barrels of crude spewing into the coastal waters of the Gulf of Mexico. We were justifiably outraged. In a legal system without corporate personhood, the channel for that outrage would be limited to lawsuits and criminal inquiries against individual human beings responsible—managers, workers, and contractors. That’s important, of course. In any legal jurisdiction worth its salt, the search for culpable individuals has to be part of the settling-up of any man-made disaster. But it should not be all. No human being—except, perhaps, Bill Gates—would have enough money to compensate those harmed by a massive disaster like Deepwater Horizon. Because a corporate entity is also on the hook, there’s a chance for something approaching real compensation or real responsibility. Corporate personhood is thus not only a mechanism for the creation of wealth (by encouraging investment), it is also a mechanism for enforcing accountability (by providing a deep pocket to sue).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The movement against “corporate personhood” does not spend much time talking about these aspects of the concept. When the left cries that corporations are not people, what they mean is that corporations should not be able to claim the constitutional rights that human beings can. Yet even here, there is reason to praise corporate personhood. Remember, the opposite of a constitutional right is a government power. If corporations have no rights, then governmental power in connection with corporations is at its maximum. That power can be abused, and corporate personhood is a necessary bulwark.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 1971, for example, the government sought to stop the New York Times, a for-profit, publicly traded media conglomerate, and the Washington Post, which had gone public as a corporation only a few weeks previously, from publishing the leaked Pentagon Papers. The Supreme Court correctly decided that the newspapers had a First Amendment right to publish. That was one of the most important free speech decisions of the 20th century. At the time, no one seriously suggested that the correct answer to the constitutional question was that the Times and the Post, as corporations, had no standing to bring a constitutional claim at all. (And for those of you saying to yourselves, “Well, this isn’t a good example, since the newspapers are protected by the First Amendment’s press clause”: The Court has never given any greater substance to the press clause not already covered in the freedom of speech. And the current proposals to end corporate personhood do not claim to save media corporations any more than pharmaceutical or oil companies.)[not true, carve out]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 1992, Planned Parenthood won a hard-fought battle to have the Supreme Court reaffirm Roe v. Wade. Planned Parenthood is a corporation; but no one seriously suggested it had no standing to object to limits on its ability to provide abortions. Today, Google and other media companies are fighting government demands to disgorge the contents of their servers. No one seriously suggests that the government’s power should be unchecked because the media companies, as corporations, have no Fourth Amendment rights to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures. Finally, if corporations were not able to claim the Fifth Amendment rights to be free of government takings, their assets and resources would always be at risk of expropriation. The risk of investing in corporations would skyrocket, undermining the reason we have them in the first place.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In fact, the argument that corporations should never have constitutional rights is embarrassingly flawed. I often think that those who make it are aware of that fact, and are using “corporations are not people” not as an analytic principle but as an organizing and fund-raising tool.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Please don’t misunderstand me. Of course corporations are not genuine human beings. They should not automatically receive all the constitutional rights that you and I can claim. Corporations cannot vote or serve on juries, for example; it does not make any sense to think of corporations asserting those rights, both because of the nature of the right and the nature of the corporate entity. Similarly, the Court has held that corporations cannot assert the Fifth Amendment right to be free of self-incrimination. The exclusion makes sense, since corporations could otherwise evade all kinds of disclosure obligations necessary to make markets work. Can you imagine General Motors having a constitutional right not to disclose safety defects in their cars?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When the time comes, the Court should draw the same line with regard to the freedom to exercise religion. The right is to protect the freedom of conscience, and only actual human beings have a conscience. (And only some of them at that.) There should be allowances for genuine associations of religious people, such as churches. But because of corporate separateness—that is, corporate personhood—it will be quite difficult for companies to show that they are genuine associations of religious people.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Should corporations be able to assert First Amendment free speech rights? The answer depends on the context; that context includes the fact that the corporation is a legal form, but is not completely dependent on it. Sometimes it makes little sense to protect the First Amendment rights of corporations. Securities laws, for example, routinely require corporations to disclose to the public their financial well-being. If you or I were required to reveal our personal finances, we could object to the requirement as coerced speech, a violation of the First Amendment. But corporations’ arguments along those lines would fail, and they should. In fact, in 2011, AT&T asked that information about its finances be excluded from Freedom of Information Act requests, because the statute has an exception for “personal privacy.” The Court unanimously rejected this claim—and Chief Justice John Roberts ridiculed it in his opinion. That exception, he wrote, “does not extend to corporations. We trust that AT&T will not take it personally.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On the other hand, sometimes it’s important to protect the right of a corporation to speak, as in the Pentagon Papers case, not because the corporation owns free speech rights but because of the rights of human listeners to listen to what it has to say. This idea—that listeners have a right to hear the words of corporate speakers—is actually a liberal idea. In the 1970s, Ralph Nader’s group Public Citizen brought a First Amendment challenge to limits on commercial advertising. They argued that these laws violated the public’s right to know. Legal scholar Adam Winkler argues that Public Citizen’s advocacy led directly to Citizens United. In his majority opinion in that case, Justice Anthony Kennedy said that the public has a right to know corporations’ views. Public Citizen now decries corporate personhood; if truth be told, it’s their own fault.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When it comes to campaign finance, I agree with the personhood opponents that Citizens United wrongly expanded corporate rights to spend money on elections. I also agree that the Court’s mistake traces its origins to the 1976 case Buckley v. Valeo, where the Court struck down limits on individual (human) campaign expenditures as violations of free speech. But the problem in Citizens United was not the Court’s supposed holding that corporations are people, and the problem in Buckley was not a supposed ruling that “money is speech.” Both are mischaracterizations, and the critical yelps they attract are poorly targeted in any event. Corporations occasionally say things that matter to voters, even in elections. And while money is not itself speech it is sometimes essential to make speech audible above the din. Giving it, too, can be an expressive act. Imagine if Texas told its citizens they could not contribute to Planned Parenthood or had to pay dues to the National Rifle Association. It would be inane to argue that the First Amendment would not be implicated because money is not speech.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nevertheless, there are myriad reasons why a commitment to free speech rights—even corporate free speech rights—should not bar reasonable limits on independent campaign expenditures from both corporations and the super rich. It is not hyperbole to say that without such limits, our democracy is at risk. The billions of dollars flooding the electoral process skew it toward the monied and well-heeled, and pervert the nature of public service. The current Court is so enamored with a simplistic, libertarian theory of free speech doctrine that it is blind to those risks. A sane Court could easily construct exceptions to otherwise applicable doctrine to protect the sanctity and fairness of our elections. In fact, Canada’s supreme court has done that very thing.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But notice something. One can support campaign finance regulation and still acknowledge corporate personhood as well.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In fact, most of the money flooding into the electoral process isn’t coming from corporations. It’s coming from rich individuals like Sheldon Adelson and the Koch brothers. There is a lot of corporate money, to be sure. Chevron, the most politically active public corporation in 2012, spent $2.5 million in that year’s election cycle; the Chamber of Commerce, the largest corporate bundler, funneled over $35 million into various 2012 races. But both were dwarfed by the torrent of individual money. Adelson alone threw almost $93 million into various races during the same period, and the Koch brothers ran a network of shady groups that spent over $400 million.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The power of corporations is frequently misused, usually to the advantage of the financial and managerial elite. Employees, communities, consumers, the environment, and the public interest in general are elbowed aside in corporate decision making, unless the corporation can make money by taking them into account. Corporations are managed aggressively to maximize shareholder return. As a result, the risks they run—whether of oil spills in the Gulf or of financial crises erupting from Wall Street—are often unrecognized until too late. The executives who run American corporations do not generally think of themselves as having obligations to the public. The social contract of American corporations is pretty thin.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But these defects of corporate power, fundamental as they are, are not problems of constitutional law or corporate personhood. They are problems of corporate law, and they could be fixed by corporate law.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">American courts forged sweeping protections for corporations during the Gilded Age; the legal fortress was slowly breached during the Progressive and New Deal eras. But in many ways we are back where we started. The Supreme Court is applying twisted ideas of free speech and due process to wall corporations off from accountability. In corporate governance, after a mid-century pendulum swing toward more public-spiritedness, managers and investors are now once again fixated on maximizing shareholder value.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the last few years, however, there’s been a pushback—even a small bandwagon—against the shareholder primacy norm. An article in the Harvard Business Review (that socialist rag!) declared in 2012, “There’s a growing body of evidence … that the companies that are most successful at maximizing shareholder value over time are those that aim toward goals other than maximizing shareholder value. Employees and customers often know more about and have more of a long-term commitment to a company than shareholders do.” New York Times columnist Joe Nocera wrote that “it feels as if we are at the dawn of a new movement—one aimed at overturning the hegemony of shareholder value.” An opinion piece in the Financial Times recently argued that “[c]ompanies need a bigger and better purpose than simply maximising shareholder value.” And speaking of socialist rags, a 2011 Forbes article called shareholder primacy “the dumbest idea in the world.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The case against shareholder primacy was argued best by Steven Pearlstein last year in the Washington Post. Maximizing shareholder value, he wrote, is a “pernicious” ideology that “has no foundation in history or in law.” He continued, “What began in the 1970s and ’80s as a useful corrective to self-satisfied managerial mediocrity has become a corrupting, self-interested dogma peddled by finance professors, money managers and over-compensated corporate executives.” In fact, he argued, “much of what Americans perceive to be wrong with the economy these days—the slow growth and rising inequality; the recurring scandals; the wild swings from boom to bust; the inadequate investment in R&D, worker training and public goods—has its roots in this ideology.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">These skeptics are popularizing what a number of legal scholars and I have been saying for quite a while—that corporations should be seen as having robust social and public obligations that cannot be encapsulated in share prices. Now, executives have legal obligations to take account of shareholder interests. Progressive corporate scholars argue that these “fiduciary duties” should be extended to employees and other corporate stakeholders.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One way to make these obligations operational is to make the decision making structure of the company itself more pluralistic. In a number of European countries, for example, companies have “codetermined” board structures that require representation of both shareholders and employees. Even with these management structures, corporations continue their focus on building wealth—that is the core purpose of the corporate form—but not for a narrow sliver of their investors only. And it works. Germany, where codetermination is strongest, is the economic powerhouse of Europe. A former CEO of the German company Siemens argued that codetermination is a “comparative advantage” for Germany; the senior managing director of the U.S. investment firm Blackstone Group had said that codetermination was one of the factors that allowed Germany to avoid the worst of the financial crisis.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Notice something. These reforms make corporations more like persons, not less. Human beings routinely balance a multitude of interests—I am, for example, a parent, a spouse, a teacher, a writer. Only the rare oddball—Donald Trump, maybe?—behaves as if accumulating money is the paramount and unitary good. Humans have consciences; corporations do not. Left to themselves, they will behave as if profit is the only thing that matters. The best way to constrain corporations is to require them to sign on to a more robust social contract and to govern themselves more pluralistically—mechanisms designed to mimic the traits of human personhood within the corporate form.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If corporations had these traits of personhood, I would worry less about corporate involvement in the political arena. American corporations have become a vehicle for the voices and interests of a small managerial and financial elite—the notorious 1 percent. The cure for this is more democracy within businesses—more participation in corporate governance by workers, communities, shareholders, and consumers. If corporations were more democratic, their participation in the nation’s political debate would be of little concern.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But corporate personhood opponents are making these corporate governance reforms less likely. Personhood skeptics often characterize corporations as having a narrow social role; because of that narrow role, the argument goes, they owe it to shareholders to stay out of politics. The famous words of the conservative economist Milton Friedman, that the “one and only social responsibility of business” is to make “as much money as possible,” were long used as the mantra of corporate managers who wanted to be released from any social obligation. Now the opponents of Citizens United are endorsing a similarly narrow view of business as a way to explain why corporations should be exiled from the public square. To fight corporate personhood, they are bolstering shareholder primacy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Take, for instance, Justice John Paul Stevens’ dissent in Citizens United itself. He argued, among other things, that corporate speech should be limited in order to protect shareholders’ investments. Shareholders are seen as owners, as “those who pay for an electioneering communication,” and are assumed to have “invested in the business corporation for purely economic reasons.” Stevens argued that corporate political speech did not merit protection because “the structure of a business corporation … draws a line between the corporation’s economic interests and the political preferences of the individuals associated with the corporation,” and that that the corporation must engage the electoral process with the aim “to enhance the profitability of the company, no matter how persuasive the arguments for a broader or conflicting set of priorities.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Even more revealing, Stevens cites as support a set of corporate governance principles adopted by the prestigious American Law Institute. The Principles were the product of compromise, both asking corporations to look after shareholder interests and allowing them to act with an eye toward “ethical” and “humanitarian” purposes. But Stevens quoted only the language embodying shareholder primacy: “A corporation … should have as its objective the conduct of business activities with a view to enhancing corporate profit and shareholder gain.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Opponents of corporate personhood are following Stevens into the shareholder rights trap. Common Cause now has a “featured campaign” for “strengthening shareholder rights.” The Brennan Center for Justice is supporting a “shareholder protection act” and calls shareholders “the actual owners” of corporations. Professor Jamie Raskin of American University, one of the smartest and most energetic academic opponents of Citizens United, says that corporations should not be spending in elections because, “after all, it’s [shareholders’] money.” This is all shareholder primacy language brought to bear in fighting Citizens United.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Wall Street loves talk of shareholder rights. Sure, many of us are shareholders through our retirement accounts and the like. But widows and orphans are still the minority; most stock held in American businesses is owned by the very wealthy. (The richest 5 percent of Americans own more than two-thirds of all stock assets. The bottom 40 percent—125 million working-class people—essentially own nothing in terms of stock.) So when opponents of Citizens United focus on shareholder rights, they are singing Wall Street’s tune.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I wish this shareholder-protective rhetoric was just that, but it’s not. Corporate personhood opponents urge, as an intermediate measure short of a constitutional amendment, that corporations be required to seek shareholder approval before spending corporate money on political campaigns. I myself have been tempted by this position, mostly because such a rule would help ensure that executives do not spend corporate monies on issues and candidates opposing company interests. But that benefit is probably marginal, and comes at the risk of validating corporate involvement in the political process in furtherance of shareholder value and to the detriment of other stakeholders. Corporations could speak out in favor of Wall Street but not employees? That would be worse, not better.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The efforts of anti-personhood activists are not only in tension with stakeholder theory on the conceptual level. In the political arena, too, a tension exists because the energy for reform is a finite resource. I believe that, in this moment, there is an opening to question the very framework of how we view corporations and their social obligations. But we won’t get anywhere on that front if the progressive left wastes its energy fighting for a constitutional amendment that is unlikely to succeed and would do more harm than good if it did.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">To cure the ills of Citizens United, we should stop fighting corporate personhood. Instead, let’s fight to make corporations more like people.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kent Greenfield is professor of law and Dean’s Research Scholar at Boston College Law School. Reprinted from Washington Monthly (January/February 2015), an independent political magazine willing to take on sacred cows—liberal and conservative.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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