The EXEGETIST: A Library Of Independent Political Thought. By: Jack H. Dawsey

American Corporations and the Supreme Court

 Part 2

 How We Got Here

By: Jack Dawsey

As I stated in the first installment, the word Corp’ocracy, (replacing the word Democracy), may appear in the next edition of Webster’s New College Dictionary.  It’s because the United States Supreme Court’s most recent 5 to 4 decision (January 21,  2010) in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, removed long-established legal barriers preventing corporations and unions from spending unlimited sums of money to influence voters in political campaigns.

Heretofore, politicians had to arguably show that they and their political campaigns were not owned by American corporations.  But the court’s ruling actually stacks the deck against peoples of all political stripes now.  It enables corporations to buy (themselves) a Congress. How did we get here?

Some contend that the founders of the nation did not like corporations.  Clearly, for the first 100-years, it seems corporations were given only limited “privileges” and not “rights.”  Only persons had rights under the law.

But after the 14^th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified in 1868, (an Amendment that extended equal protection under the law to all male citizens of the U.S regardless of race), the mischief began.

Because of the 14^th Amendment, corporate attorneys seized the moment.  In earnest, they began to advocate for “corporate personhood.”   Finally in 1886, the opportunity presented itself in: The County of Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific Railroad (SPRR). 

The substance of that case was not so much “corporate personhood” but deducting mortgage costs on (SPRR’s) vast holdings.  But, as in all legal decisions “words” have consequences.

In that 1886 case, Chief Justice Waite said, “The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the 14^th Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations.  We are all of the opinion that it does.”   

It seems that this one statement laid the golden egg for corporate attorneys.  This one single sentence likely changed the frame of North American politics. It laid the foundation of corruption by recognizing corporations as “persons” and not as “things” which the founders of the nation intended.

The irony is that in his “official stations Judge Waite was able, upright, and impartial; in private life he was just and true, pure in his morals, exemplary in his habits, and faithful in the discharge of all his duties.” -Google

Wittingly or unwitting, Judge Waite may have set the course to thwart the noble experiment of government “for, of, and by” the people.   And to think that less than 25-years before he uttered his words, this nation engaged in a great civil war.  A war that spilled the blood of 620,000 of this nation’s best and brightest to preserve Lincoln’s assertion: “That this nation shall not perish from the earth…”

I believe, as many other advocates of representative government, that the (little noticed) decision of January 21^st 2010 to apply the 1^st Amendment (and by extension the 14^th Amendment) to corporations put the finishing nail in America’s political coffin.

Unless a true and independent 3^rd political party is given birth in this country, a vote for a republican or a democrat in November is, (in my opinion), no more than a gesture in pretense for democracy.