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Why We Need A "We, The People" Amendment! (Original Post) thomhartmann May 2016 OP
I know this cause is popular on the left, but I think it's a mistake. Jim Lane May 2016 #1
 

Jim Lane

(11,175 posts)
1. I know this cause is popular on the left, but I think it's a mistake.
Fri May 13, 2016, 10:37 PM
May 2016

First, as to Mr. Cobb's overblown claims, it's simply not true that the legal doctrine of corporate personhood means that corporations can overturn any democratically enacted law for environmental protection and so on. We have many protective laws in place. Such problems as the laws have don't arise from corporate personhood.

Second, he ignores the importance of the Due Process Clause as a protection against governmental abuse. The Due Process Clause is wording in the Fifth Amendment (applicable to the federal government) and the Fourteenth Amendment (applicable to state and local governments). It states that no person may be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law.

Note that the Due Process Clause protects a "person". So what happens if the Constitution is amended to provide that a corporation is not a person? Well, consider the venerable left-wing magazine The Progressive. It's published by a corporation (Progressive, Inc.). Since its founding, it's been based in Madison, Wisconsin.

Wisconsin? Does that ring any bells? Suppose Scott Walker and the nutjobs in the state legislature pass a law that orders The Progressive to stop publishing immediately and further declares that all the corporation's assets, including the magazine's subscription list, are hereby forfeited to the state, without compensation. If you think they wouldn't do that, you haven't been following Wisconsin politics (see also Kansas, North Carolina, etc.).

Under current law, the corporation's lawyers go to court and get that law overturned immediately. That's because it would be a clear violation of the corporation's rights under the Constitution.

If Move To Amend succeeds, though, what would restrain Scott Walker? The lawyers for The Progressive would argue that its property has been taken without due process of law, in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. The lawyers for the state would respond, however, that only a "person" is secure against such a taking, and Progressive, Inc. is no longer a person.

Furthermore, even the part of the law that prohibits The Progressive from publishing would stand up. The First Amendment, you say? Sorry, that restrains only what Congress can do. It's been applied to the states only because of, you guessed it, the Due Process Clause.

The real problem with Citizens United (corporations) and McCutcheon (individuals) is treating money as speech. That's where the amendment is needed.

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