But corporations claimed they should be protected from discrimination under the 14th Amendment, which was drawn up in 1866 and ratified in 1868 to provide equal protection for freed slaves, as "persons born or naturalized in the United States." The first case apparently giving corporations protection under the 14th Amendment was the 1886 case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, where the presumption of civil rights for corporations was the result of an overzealous Supreme Court reporter who also was a former New York railroad president, and who wrote in the headnotes to the case, "The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth 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," when the court apparently made no such determination. But in later years Supreme Courts seemed to accept the theory of corporate personhood and showed increasing deference to the rights of corporations as they seek to escape taxes and regulation from the state.
To overturn Buckley v. Valeo, which upheld limits on campaign contributions but not limits on campaign expenditures, you would have to actually amend the First Amendment, which I think would be much more dangerous than trying to clarify that corporations are not persons under the law.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Clara_County_v._Southern_Pacific_Railroad.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckley_v._Valeo.
>In response to the Citizens United decision, there seems to be a
>movement afoot by some folks on the left to amend the Constitution
>to end corporate personhood. See here: http://www.movetoamend.org/ .
>Maybe I'm missing something important, but this seems insane.
>Legally speaking, labor unions are corporations ("non-stock
>corporations") - so are all cooperatives, and Amnesty International,
>and the Economic Policy Institute, etc. etc. They're all
>corporations, as is pretty much any non-governmental organization.
>"Corporation" is a legal term, but basically it's just a synonym for
>"collectivity." Is the left in this country so hyper-individualistic
>that it wants to stymie all economic and social life not based on
>the rugged individual?
>
>If corporations no longer had personal rights (e.g., against illegal
>search and seizure, or prior restraint of speech), Exxon would lose
>those rights but so would the ACLU. Do we want that? Or am I
>misunderstanding the legal issues? It seems to me that's wrong with
>campaign finance in this country is not the fact that corporations
>have same rights as people, it's that people with money effectively
>have more rights than people without money. So it would seem the
>logical step would just be an amendment to reverse Buckley v. Valeo
>and give Congress the right to regulate campaign spending. For years
>I've been wondering why nobody on the left was campaigning for such
>an amendment. Now it turns out they're doing it, but fucking it up?
>Please tell me I've got this wrong.
>
>SA