By Bill Quigley
06 February, 2012
Countercurrents.org
Countercurrents.org
[REPRINT]
“Corporations are people, my friend.” Mitt Romney at Iowa State Fair
Corporations are
obviously not people. But Romney is accurate in the sense that
corporations have hijacked most of the rights of people while evading
the responsibilities. An important part of the social justice agenda is
democratizing corporations. This means we must radically change the laws
so people can be in charge of corporations. We must strip them of
corporate personhood and cut them down to size so democracy can work.
People are taking action so democracy can regulate the size, scope and
actions of corporations.
One of the most basic roles of society is to protect
the people from harm. The massive size of many international
corporations makes democratic control over them nearly impossible.
Corporate crime is widespread. The New York Times,
ProPublica and others have revealed Wall Street giants like JPMorgan,
Citigroup, Bank of America and Goldman Sachs have been charged with
fraud many times only to get off by paying hundreds of millions.
Professors at University of Virginia have documented hundreds of
corporations which have been found guilty or pled guilty in federal
courts.
Corporate abuse is even more widespread. For
example, Corporate Accountability International named six to its
Corporate Hall of Shame, including: Koch Industries for spending over
$50 million to fund climate change denial; Monsanto for mass producing
cancer causing chemicals; Chevron for dumping more than 18 billion
gallons of toxic waste into the Ecuadorian Amazon; Exxon Mobil for being
the worst polluter; Blackwater (now Xe) for killing unarmed Iraqi
civilians and hiring paramilitaries; and Halliburton, the nation’s
leading war profiteer.
Making corporations responsible to democracy of the
people is challenging considering Wal-Mart, the world’s biggest
corporation, does more business itself annually than all but two dozen
of the two hundred plus countries in the world. Without dramatic
changes, how can we expect people in small or even big countries to
force corporations like Wal-Mart, Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon Mobil, BP,
Toyota or Chevron to live by the same rules all the people have to?
Justice demands we make sure corporations do not harm people. Democracy must require that they operate for the common good.
In order to cut corporations down to size, the
people must strip corporations of the special artificial legal
protections they have created for themselves.
The story of how corporations took the full rights
of legal persons in one of the great perverse tragedies in legal
history. Corporations have worked the courts mercilessly since 1819 to
take a wide variety of constitutional rights that were designed to cover
only people. For example, the Fourteenth Amendment was passed in 1868
to make sure all citizens, particularly freed slaves and people of
color, had full rights. There was no mention of protecting corporations.
But corporations jumped on this opportunity resulting in a questionable
Supreme Court decision that granted them legal personhood. At roughly
the same time, the Supreme Court approved “separate but equal” racial
segregation. Thus in thirty years, African Americans lost their legal
personhood, while corporations acquired theirs.
Corporations now claim: 1st amendment free speech
rights to advertise and influence elections: 4th amendment search and
seizure rights to resist subpoenas and challenges to their criminal
actions; 5th amendment rights to due process; 14th amendment rights to
due process where corporations took the rights of former slaves and used
them for corporate protection; plus rights under the Commerce and
Contracts clauses of the constitution.
The most recent corporate judicial takeover of
constitutional rights is the 2010 Supreme Court decision in Citizens
United versus the Federal Election Commission. The court ruled that
corporations are protected by the First Amendment so they can use their
money to influence elections.
Because of the bad Supreme Court decisions, it takes
a constitutional amendment by the people to change the laws back. An
amendment requires two-thirds of both houses of Congress to agree then
three-quarters of the states must vote to ratify. This will take real
work. But despite the growing size and unrestricted power of
corporations, people are fighting back.
Dozens of groups are working to reverse Citizens
United and restore limits on corporate election advocacy. In January
2011, groups delivered petitions signed by over 750,000 people calling
on Congress to amend the Constitution and reverse the decision. More
than 350 local events were held in late January 2012 to challenge the
Citizens United decision.
Groups challenging this injustice include Code Pink,
Common Cause, Free Speech for People, Moveon.org, Move to Amend,
National Lawyers Guild, POCLAD, Public Citizen, People for American Way,
The Center for Media and Democracy, and Women’s League for Peace and
Freedom.
Many groups are asking for a broad constitutional
amendment that makes it clear that corporations are not people and
should not be given any constitutional rights. Representatives Ted
Deutsch of Florida, Jim McGovern of Massachusetts and Senator Bernie
Sanders of Vermont have sponsored bills in Congress to start the process
for a constitutional amendment to make it clear that corporations are
not people, are not entitled to the rights of people, and cannot
contribute to political campaigns.
There are also many energetic actions at the state
level. People for the American Way list organizational efforts in nearly
all 50 states to end corporate influence in elections or amend the
constitution.
Massive corporations now rule the earth. But they
are recent arrivals which can and should be dispatched. It is time for
people to again take control. The legal fiction of corporate personhood
and the constitutional rights taken by corporations must cease. Join the
efforts to cut them down to size and restore the right of the people to
govern.
Bill is a human rights lawyer who
teaches at Loyola University New Orleans and works with the Center for
Constitutional Rights. A version of this article with full sources is
available. You can reach Bill at quigley77@gmail.com
