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IANAL, and I haven't studied the issue, but from what I do understand, Citizens United made a lot of sense from a strict legal perspective. That is, corporation

IANAL, and I haven't studied the issue, but from what I do understand, Citizens United made a lot of sense from a strict legal perspective. That is, corporations have always been persons under the law, and they were just affirming that. The issue, really, is more that they also affirmed the usage of this detail as a loophole because they were faced with either (1) negating a crapton of case law that depended on corporate personhood (any court case with a corporation as plaintiff or defendant, for instance) or (2) legislating from the bench. So they went with option 3. The solution as I see it would have been to say that monetary expenditure doesn't constitute speech and is thus subject to regulation. If people want to propagate political messages free of charge in order to get around the regulation, I think I'd be okay with that. That feels like a legislator's turf rather than a judiciary's turf, but I'm not entirely sure; the dissent's opinion didn't seem to suggest this solution, so I might be completely off-base or it really is a legislator's turf thing.

akiselev 14y ago
I only mentioned the Citizens United case because it's popularly reviled. I see no problem with the ruling as far as precedent goes (although I have qualms about the general rights without responsibilities that corps get) and I don't think it has really changed that much. Except... the commercials seem to get more and more interesting. The SCOTUS certainly has an idealogical split (as in conservative vs liberal) but the categories are far more nuanced than just Republican or Democrat and I think they've been doing a decent job.
- jacoblyles 14y ago
  It is only "popularly reviled" among leftists because the Citizens United non-profit corporation was producing right-wing speech. For my part, I agree with the ACLU that the decision was a resounding victory for free speech.
khuey 14y ago
Corporations have not always been persons under the law.
- saraid216 14y ago
  94% of the lifetime of the law itself, and inspired by British practices, is pretty close to "always" for me. I went looking for a history of USC Title 1 Section 1, but I couldn't find anything, and I think that numbering system was only set up in 1920 anyways. Again, I'm not an expert in this field. I could totally be wrong. But you're going to have to be a little more convincing than "No it's not" to overrule Wikipedia.
  - khuey 14y ago
    The modern understanding of corporate personhood (that "equal protection of the laws" applies to non-natural persons) is generally dated to Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company in 1888. I don't know where "94% of the lifetime of the law itself" and "inspired by British practices" come from, so I can't really dispute those.

akiselev 14y ago

I only mentioned the Citizens United case because it's popularly reviled. I see no problem with the ruling as far as precedent goes (although I have qualms about the general rights without responsibilities that corps get) and I don't think it has really changed that much. Except... the commercials seem to get more and more interesting. The SCOTUS certainly has an idealogical split (as in conservative vs liberal) but the categories are far more nuanced than just Republican or Democrat and I think they've been doing a decent job.

jacoblyles 14y ago
It is only "popularly reviled" among leftists because the Citizens United non-profit corporation was producing right-wing speech. For my part, I agree with the ACLU that the decision was a resounding victory for free speech.

khuey 14y ago

Corporations have not always been persons under the law.

saraid216 14y ago
94% of the lifetime of the law itself, and inspired by British practices, is pretty close to "always" for me. I went looking for a history of USC Title 1 Section 1, but I couldn't find anything, and I think that numbering system was only set up in 1920 anyways. Again, I'm not an expert in this field. I could totally be wrong. But you're going to have to be a little more convincing than "No it's not" to overrule Wikipedia.
- khuey 14y ago
  The modern understanding of corporate personhood (that "equal protection of the laws" applies to non-natural persons) is generally dated to Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company in 1888. I don't know where "94% of the lifetime of the law itself" and "inspired by British practices" come from, so I can't really dispute those.