What would passing this amendment actually accomplish?Passing this amendment would immediately have the effect of canceling the supposed "right" of corporations to contribute to political campaigns or to run advertising to influence the vote during campaigns. Corporations currently derive this "right" from their status as "legal persons" which dates from a Supreme Court decision in 1886. Today corporations claim that they have a "right to free speech" (protected by the First Amendment) which allows them to spend as much money as they want, in any way they see fit, to influence candidates and elections. Their money is their speech, in this legal theory which is so far upheld by the courts. In a democracy, the political process should be reserved for people, and these people should all be on an equal footing insofar as that is possible. Corporations cannot be imprisoned for their crimes. They cannot feel pain or shame. While they may be dissolved, they cannot be killed, because they are not alive to begin with. The corporate "legal persons" are the actual undead of American politics. They do not (as yet) have a vote in the voting booth, and they ought not to participate in politics at all. The Human Rights Amendment removes this issue from the power of the Supreme Court, nullifying their earlier decision and all the legal consequences that follow. It would certainly take a lawyer to lay out all the ramifications of obliterating the legal fiction that corporations are "legal persons." Several lawyers explaining the consequences would no doubt soon begin arguing among themselves. And in fact, no lawyer could accurately anticipate all the results that would flow from passage of this amendment, though it would indeed lay the legal foundation for a democratic political process to control corporations, just the opposite of the present situation. If the amendment is passed, many things then become possible, though not inevitable. For instance, it would be possible to pass a law that corporations cannot own other corporations, that all stock in a corporation must be owned by individual human beings who would then, as owners, be responsible for the actions of the corporation in proportion to their ownership shares. In the case of corporations building weapons for the military, it might be further required that all shareholders be American citizens. This might be a good idea or a bad one. Discussing the merits of the idea is not the point here. The point is that the idea, good or bad, would be impossible to make into law under the current construction of the Constitution, and that it would be possible if the Human Rights Amendment is passed. What use should be made of the many possibilities is an extensive question, pointless to discuss so long as corporations have the rights of persons. What would this amendment accomplish? Why should any organization work on getting it passed? Who is this "ad hoc committee"? |