Robert Reich: How We Get Rid of "Citizens United"
Link: https://robertreich.substack.com/p/how-we-get-rid-of-citizens-united
That decision opened the floodgates to campaign spending by giant corporations. The high court reasoned that corporations are people who have First Amendment rights to free speech, and that corporate spending on elections is a form of free speech. But the Supreme Court never got to the more fundamental question of corporate power, because since the early twentieth century states haven’t limited corporate powers to do much of anything.
Yet corporations are creatures of state law. States create and define corporations. Whatever powers corporations have come from state decisions to grant them those powers. This principle is embodied in an 1819 opinion by Chief Justice John Marshall declaring that a corporation “possesses only those properties which the charter of its creation confers upon it.”
It wasn’t until the early 20th century that states began to give corporations all the powers human beings have. But states don’t have to do that. States can decide to give them the powers they need to do their business, but not the power to spend money on elections.
This isn’t about corporate rights. It’s about the more basic question of corporate powers. If a corporation doesn’t have the power to do something in the first place, it obviously doesn’t have any right to do it. Without the power to do it, a corporation cannot do it. The state hasn’t empowered it to do it.
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Please read the rest on Robert Reich's substack that includes details on a plan in Montana where citizens will vote this summer in a referendum on whether corporations should have the power to spend money on elections. It's already being considered in other states as well.
RECOMMENDED READING!
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This referendum in Montana is going to redefine what it means to be a corporation, and what corporations can and can't do in Montana.
The SCOTUS ruling - called "Citizens United" - gave corporations the same freedom of speech rights that citizens have, and that includes supporting political campaigns. However individual states, namely Montana and others, seek to clarify those free speech rights. If the people of Montana decide in their referendum that corporations never had the right to make donations to political campaigns, they will in effect have nullified the Citizens United ruling in their state.
I'm not a lawyer and I don't play one on TV. But sometimes I learn things when I read Robert Reich's columns that explain stuff like this.
