Corporations aren’t people Letter to the Editor / Akron Beacon Journal / Wednesday, September 17, 2014 ohio/editorial/vop/letters-to-the-editor-sept-17-1.523257 The recent ruling by a federal judge striking down Ohio’s law on false campaign statements as unconstitutional reinforces yet again the absurd doctrine that corporations possess inalienable constitutional rights. U.S. District Judge Timothy Black ruled that the state of Ohio couldn’t enforce its law seeking to prevent political false statements. This includes individuals as well as the Susan B. Anthony List, the 501(c)(4) corporation that challenged the law. The decision treats corporations, which are artificial legal creations of government, and persons as identical. They are not. Governments do not create human beings. They do create corporations, via charters, which were originally intended to define corporate actions. Without government, there are no corporations, which are legally distinct from a group of people informally coming together to achieve a common purpose. Aside from whether the “right to lie” by individuals is a form of constitutionally protected free speech (after all, some forms of individual speech are already limited, such as yelling “fire” in a crowded theatre), the question of permitting corporations free speech, or any other constitutional rights, is a political questions, not a constitutional one. As was once the case in Ohio, vigorous discussions and debates in public political arenas are where decisions about the appropriate roles of corporations in our society should be made, not courts. Corporations are not persons. Continuing to treat them as such by the courts places in peril what little remains of our democratic republic. Greg Coleridge Director, Northeast Ohio American Friends Service Committee, Cuyahoga Falls
Posted on: Thu, 18 Sep 2014 14:42:02 +0000
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