Re:Why Forcing Apple to Write and Sign Code Violates the Fir...
by JoshTriplett on Friday March 04, 2016 @12:18AM
(#11222172)
I find it unfortunate that Citizens United extended the concept of corporate legal personhood espoused by Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Clara_County_v._Southern...). I think instead it makes sense to say that corporations are made up of people, and it doesn't make sense to grant a right to individual people but deny them the ability to act as a group in exercising that right. It would have sufficed to rule based on freedom of association: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_association#United_...
Re:Why Forcing Apple to Write and Sign Code Violates the Fir...
by GauntletWizard on Friday March 04, 2016 @12:52AM
(#11222275)
That is precisely what the court ordered. To wit, "If the First Amendment has any force, it prohibits Congress
from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of
citizens, for simply engaging in political speech. If the
antidistortion rationale were to be accepted, however, it
would permit Government to ban political speech simply
because the speaker is an association that has taken on
the corporate form. "
It's fairly clear throughout the ruling[1] that the Justices are not relying on corporate personhood, but the freedom of association argument. It is a media myth that the case was about 'corporations are people, too!'
Re:Why Forcing Apple to Write and Sign Code Violates the Fir...
by lmm on Friday March 04, 2016 @09:11AM
(#11223757)
> Edit: It's a common misconception that Citizens United allowed unlimited campaign contributions to candidates. That's not quite true--it allowed unlimited independent expenditures by corporations, but not unlimited contributions directly to candidates. The Supreme Court held in Buckley (1976) that the limit on direct contributions was a constitutional restriction on free speech because of the government's interest in "the prevention of corruption and the appearance of corruption spawned by the real or imagined coercive influence of large financial contributions on candidates' positions and on their actions if elected to office." That ruling still stands.
The trouble is that it has the same effect, and creates the same appearance of corruption. Acausal trade is possible; a candidate and their PAC do not have to directly communicate to end up influencing each other's behaviour.
Edit: It's a common misconception that Citizens United allowed unlimited campaign contributions to candidates. That's not quite true--it allowed unlimited independent expenditures by corporations, but not unlimited contributions directly to candidates. The Supreme Court held in Buckley (1976) that the limit on direct contributions was a constitutional restriction on free speech because of the government's interest in "the prevention of corruption and the appearance of corruption spawned by the real or imagined coercive influence of large financial contributions on candidates' positions and on their actions if elected to office." That ruling still stands.
Edit 2: Citizens United didn't hold that corporations are people--that doctrine has been around for a century. It held that because corporations are people, they have the same speech rights as natural persons--namely, to make unlimited independent expenditures.