Purpose:  Educate the class about how our judicial system, from the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS), to the federal appeals courts, down to the State Supreme Courts, is being utilized as a mechanism of corporate and monied elite power and what role “corporate personhood” plays in this process.

 

Materials

Readings: Justice Rising, Spring 2010, Courts and Corporations vs. Our Common Good, Abolish Corporate Personhood by Jan Edwards and Molly Morgan,

Handouts:  Questions & Article Rankings, Talking Points

 

 

Paradigm: The common narrative is that judges are impartial and fair individuals above the common political fray. This class brings people face-to-face with the reality that judges have long been politicians in robes and often arbiters on the side of wealth and power.

 

Context: In the debate over the US Constitution, many American patriots were horrified that the new Constitution proposed an undemocratic, unaccountable, life-long Supreme Court that the patriots saw as a reinstallation of the monarchy, able to solve any conflict in favor of the elite.

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As Jan Edwards and Molly Morgan point out in their piece Corporate Personhood, which is part of the readings for this class, “The pattern over more than two centuries of US legal history is that people acquire rights by amendment to the Constitution — a long and difficult, but democratic, process — and corporations acquire them by Supreme Court decisions.” They go on to say that “It is important to remember what a corporation is, to understand the implications of corporate personhood for democracy. A corporation is not a real thing; it’s a legal fiction, an abstraction. You can’t see or hear or touch or smell a corporation — it’s just an idea that people agree to and put into writing. Because legal personhood has been conferred upon an abstraction that can be redefined at will under the law, corporations have become super humans in our world.

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• A corporation can live forever.

• It can change its identity in a day.

• It can cut off parts of itself — even its head — and actually function better than before.

• It can also cut off parts of itself and from those parts grow new corporations.

• It can own others of its own kind and it can merge with others of its own kind.

• It doesn’t need fresh air to breathe or clean water to drink or safe food to eat.

• It doesn’t fear illness or death.

• It can have simultaneous residence in many different nations.

• It’s not male, female, or even transgendered.

• Without giving birth it can create children and even parents.

• If it’s found guilty of a crime, it cannot go to prison.”

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            Then they go on to ask, “What would change if corporations did not have personhood? The first and main effect would be that a barrier would be removed that is preventing democratic change just as the abolition of slavery tore down an insurmountable legal block, making it possible to pass laws to provide full rights to the newly freed slaves. After corporate personhood is abolished, new legislation will be possible. Here are a few examples.

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• If  ‘corporate persons’ no longer had First Amendment right of free speech, we could prohibit all corporate political activity, such as lobbying and contributions to political candidates and parties.

• If  ‘corporate persons’ were not protected against search without a warrant under the Fourth Amendment, then corporate managers couldn’t turn OSHA and the EPA inspectors away if they make surprise, unscheduled searches.

• If ‘corporate persons’ weren’t protected against discrimination under the 14th Amendment, corporations like Wal-Mart couldn’t force themselves into communities that don’t want them.”

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Our current Supreme Court, which gave us the Citizens United decision in 2010, is the culmination of a long push stimulated by the money and political drive coming out of the Powell Memo. Starting in that period there was a coordinated drive to change law schools and legal thinking in the direction of free market analysis and libertarianism.

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The Federalist Society, founded by Reagan’s Attorney General and promoted by deceased Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, acts as the biggest provocateur constructing the conservative legal movement. It gives lip service to returning to the original intent of the country’s founders, but it fails to renounce later judicial decisions that increased the power of money in this country, including the acceptance of corporate personhood, the concept that money is equal to speech and all of the corporate rights that allow corporations to dominate our public-policy making.

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The financial backing for the Federalist Society has come from the Scaife Family Foundations, the Koch brothers, Chevron, and Google. It is openly acknowledged that without their support the Federalist Society would have never come into being.

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Many groups are working to solve the problems the pro-corporate, conservative legal movement has created. The group Move to Amend (MTA) is promoting one of the primary solutions. Founded in response to the Citizen United decision in 2010, it is a coalition of hundreds of citizen groups determined to pass a Constitutional amendment, (the 28th), to end corporate personhood and make sure that money is not considered equal to speech in our laws. They have 54 chapters in 16 states. Check out their website at https://movetoamend.org/

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There are many ways people can get involved with Move to Amend, including:

• Forming a local group;

• Passing a local resolution in support of the Constitutional amendment;

• Signing the petition in support of the 28th Amendment;

• Stamping your money with any of several messages such as, “A Corporation is Not a Person, Money is Not Speech” or “Not to be Used For Bribing Politicians.”

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There are many groups working to resolve the problems of the Citizens United decision, but none of them covers the corporate personhood and money as speech issues like Move to Amend. Free Speech for the People, https://freespeechforpeople.org/and American Promise, http://www.americanpromise.net/ support an amendment that would limit corporate rights but do not necessarily take on the money as speech issue or push to take away all judicially created corporate rights. All these groups are working together and the thinking seems to be that in the end there will be consensus on what will work best. They all address different constituencies. American Promise brings together a long list of prominent politicians. Free Speech for the People is headed by long-time voter rights advocate John Bonifaz and brings the voters rights groups into the discussion.  You can check them all out but beware of other groups who just use the Citizens United issue as a fund-raising tool and are not committed to pursuing the tough changes needed to control corporate power.

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The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund takes another approach. It has written an ordinance for local governments to take charge of their elections and end corporate personhood in their jurisdictions. See their section on corporate rights and read their ordinance at their website www.celdf.org

 

Activities: There are two major activities for this class.  The first is a discussion of the connection between Supreme Court judges and America’s monied elite. It uses the center section from Justice Rising Vol. 5 #3 regarding three Supreme Courts as a starting point for discussion. You can download it here and have it printed out on a 36" plotter. It shows the history and make-up of:

• The original US Supreme Court;

• The Supreme Court of the 1880s that cemented corporate personhood as a legal precedent;

• The current Roberts court. 

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It is a startling confirmation that the Supreme Court has long supported the power of the monied elite. Here are notes for talking about the center section presentation.

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The second important activity for this class is a discussion of the ways that corporations have gained rights over the past 250-years as opposed to the way citizens have gained rights over that same period. This discussion uses the Timeline of Corporate and Human Rights, which shows various court cases where corporate-friendly judges gave corporations rights and the huge social movements that had to develop to give citizens more rights. This timeline can be printed out on a series of 8.5x11 sheets of paper. However, you can also download larger presentation versions at https://movetoamend.org/timeline. Depending on the wall space available, the 26” tall version is best for presentations but ends up being about 17 feet long. Choose one and have it printed out on a plotter. Mount it on the wall before the class begins so that people can inspect it when they have time. Here are notes for discussing the Timeline, but you can also choose your own cases to talk about.

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If you can, invite a speaker from Move to Amend or any of the other groups to talk about what they are doing. If not, you can certainly show MTA’s 30-minute video, Legalize Democracy, to the class. You can find it at https://movetoamend.org/toolkit/legalize-democracy-discussion-guide

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These discussions can easily take up the first part of the class. If you run out of time, you can always talk about the solutions in the second part of the class. Take a break in the middle. In the second part of the class, discuss the questions for the readings. Here are some notes for discussing those questions.

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Since the questions do not cover the piece on Corporate Personhood by Jan Edwards and Molly Morgan, it would also be good to discuss that document. Here are some notes on the most important ideas in that article.

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Before the end of the class, present this list of books for further reading on courts and corporations. Before everyone leaves, pass out the talking points, questions and article rankings for the next class, which is the first class in Part 3: Crisis of Economics and Visions for the Future and looks at Climate Change, Resource Depletion and Global Pollution.

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The day after the class, email the questions and rankings for the next class to everyone and include a current article on corporate money in politics.

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The day before the next class, send a reminder email that the class is coming up and again attach the questions and ranking and maybe a piece on the machinations of our corporate-dominated economic system.