Another Brick in the Wall

scotusThursday, January 21, 2010 — Congratulations, Citizen! Now that the Supreme Court has ruled in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, you and Exxon-Mobil are now equal under the law.

In the following press release, The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) responds lucidly and appropriately to the latest outrage from the Supreme Court. Building on essential work done by the Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy (POCLAD), CELDF has been developing practical ways for communities to defend themselves against our corporate overlords.

Coming on the heels of Scott Brown’s election to the Senate and the resultant likely defeat of health care reform, perhaps this most-recent trampling of the rights of citizens will be that “bridge too far” for the corporatists. (Hey — what can we say? We’re optimists.)

The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund on Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission

Today’s U.S. Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission – giving corporations the ability to spend money directly to influence federal elections under the Constitution’s First Amendment – was inevitable. It represents a logical expansion of corporate constitutional “rights” – which include the rights of persons which have been judicially conferred upon corporations. “Personhood” rights mean that corporations possess First Amendment rights to free speech, along with a litany of other rights that are secured to persons under the federal Bill of Rights.

The expansion of corporate rights and privileges under the law has been deliberate, beginning nearly two hundred years ago with the Dartmouth decision in which the Supreme Court ruled that private corporations have rights that municipal corporations – governments composed of “we the people” – did not.

The expansion of these rights and privileges occurred during the 1800s, throughout the 1900s, until today. For those who think that the way to stem this tide is to find the perfect lawsuit, we say, stop looking. It doesn’t exist, for there is no magic bullet.

Rather, in order to reverse decisions like Citizens United, the whole concept of corporate “rights” must be examined, and how corporations possessing “rights” interferes with the exercise of rights by people, communities, and nature. And, it’s not simply that corporations have “personhood” rights. It goes well beyond that.

Today’s structure of law gives corporations a spectrum of legal and constitutional rights which they routinely wield against people, communities, and nature. Corporations have more rights, for example, than the communities in which they seek to do business. They have rights which they use to lobby Congress, impact elections, to decide for us what we eat, whether mountaintops are blown off or not, whether there are fish in the oceans, and on and on. Coupling their wealth with constitutional and other legal rights guarantees that they write the laws which determine these things, along with defining the debate that leads to the adoption of the new laws.

Thus the context for understanding today’s decision is that we have a minority set of corporate interests, empowered by government, which wield their rights against a majority. It is the history of this nation. Whether with the Abolitionists, the Suffragists, the Civil Rights Movement – all found it necessary to build movements of people to drive rights into law – rights for slaves, rights for women, rights of African Americans – which necessarily meant eliminating rights for a minority such as the slaveholder. In the end, it is our constitutional structure of law that purposefully placed the rights of property and commerce over the rights of people, communities, and nature.

In some ways, the Citizens United ruling is merely part of a predetermined destiny set by a 1700’s constitutional structure which placed greater priority on the rights of property and commerce than on people and nature. Reversing Citizens United means reversing that constitutional legacy.

And today – those who recognize that we do not have democracy when corporations located thousands of miles away are making decisions about our community instead of us, who recognize that we cannot have sustainability so long as corporations are able to decide how clean our air is and our water is, who recognize that we’ll never have true health care reform so long as corporations have greater access to our elected representatives than the people who voted for them – to those people – today’s decision should be understood as just another brick in the wall, another step in a direction that will only continue unless and until a real movement for the rights of people, communities, and nature is built. That is the work we are doing. We hope you will join us.

The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund is the only public interest law firm in the U.S. that has worked with municipalities to question whether corporate “rights” can coexist with the democratic rights of communities to local self-government.

Those communities have recognized that corporate rights and privileges are routinely wielded to override democratic decision making and undermine efforts to protect the environment and public health, local economies and local agriculture. Through the adoption of local, binding laws, these communities are pioneering a new structure of law which does not recognize the rights and privileges of corporations.

3 thoughts on “Another Brick in the Wall”

  1. “Obama has some of his guys on that Supreme Court as well.” Some as in one. One who voted against the decision. False equivalency, and not miuch of a challenge to refute.

  2. People also have to remember that President Obama has some of his guys on that Supreme Court as well. So this move has to make you wonder which party is going to benefit most from it. You know the Democrats are worried because of the loss in MA. But I guess we will only see in the future.

  3. Seems it is time to get to the root of this problem and Amend the Constitution to Abolish Corporate Personhood.

    Corporate Personhood is the doctrine that a corporation can claim to be a person, and therefore entitled to basic human rights – also described as political and civil rights – and have courts overturn laws.

    As this decision clearly demonstrates, corporate personhood is not an inconsequential legal technicality. Consider this – the Supreme Court ruled that a corporation was a “legal person” with 14th Amendment protections before the Court granted full personhood to African Americans, immigrants, Native Americans, and women.

    Check these folks out: http://www.MoveToAmend.org.

    They’re calling for a Constitutional Amendment that will:

    * Firmly establish that money is not speech, and that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights.
    * Guarantee the right to vote and to participate, and to have our votes and participation count.
    * Protect local communities, their economies, and democracies against illegitimate “preemption” actions by global, national, and state governments.

    You can sign on to the Motion too.

Leave a Comment