Corporations Are Using Your Rights; Are You?
The power grab perpetrated by corporate interests over the years has not occurred as an abstract concept. Well organized business interests have undercut democracy by convincing the judicial branch that corporations somehow deserve the same rights as citizens.
While corporate power has challenged democratic institutions on many fronts, corporate personhood has become the underlying philosophy used by corporate lawyers and an increasing number of judges. The idea that corporations deserve the same rights as citizens is by no means a natural phenomenon. Corporations are never mentioned in the constitution and have never legally been granted any rights, not specifically written into their charters.
The idea of corporate personhood has been created explicitly by judicial activism, which is ironically the same concept conservatives claim to despise. Corporate personhood achieved legal status by incredibly undemocratic means. Usually, if the court decides on an issue that does not specifically pertain to them, they must have a certain amount of discussion on it and then explain why they feel it falls under their jurisdiction.
However, this did not occur in the judicial creation of corporate personhood. When deciding Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific Railroad (1886), a headnote, with no legal standing read: �The court does not wish to hear arguments on whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment�applies to these corporations. We are of the opinion that it does.� Since then, corporate lawyers have used this non-binding statement as precedent that the constitutional rights granted to citizens also apply to corporations.
�In a democracy, citizens are the only legitimate sources of the law�Like government itself, corporations are mere tools of the citizenry, political objects rather than�subjects, to be given as much respect as the citizens who use it deem useful and no more. To grant a tool rights against the citizens who use it is a form of political idolatry that ought to be abhorrent to any democratic regime. Rights are for people, not for their instruments.�
Daniel Greenwood,
Citizen Works