INTRODUCTION
According to the amended version of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA), corporations and unions are banned from “electioneering communication.” This implies that corporations and unions are prohibited by federal laws from using their financial muscle to advocate for or against the election of specific candidates in terms of speech. BCRA defines electioneering communication as “any broadcast, cable, or satellite communication” that “refers to a clearly identified candidate for Federal office” and is made within 30 days of a primary election and that is “publicly distributed.” It must however be mentioned that BCRA upholds the right of corporations to form a Political Action Committee (PAC) for the sole purpose of advocating or electioneering communications. For the following contentious case ascertains whether the judicial system applied the BCRA to the latter.
In January of the year 2008, Citizens United, a non-profit corporation made a documentary about Hillary Clinton, then a presidential candidate in the Democratic Party primaries 30days. The documentary is commonly referred as Hillary. Basically, Hillary was extremely critical of Senator Hillary Clinton. Citizens United then went ahead to produce ads that ran on broadcast and cable television. In fear of facing both civil and criminal charges, the corporation went to the courts to seek declaratory and injunctive relief. The district court of Columbia denied Citizens United the injunctive relief and ruled a summary judgment in favor of the appellee the Federal Elections Commissions (FEC). However, Citizens United was not happy with these ruling hence they went ahead to appeal to the Supreme Court where the case was heard between the 24th of March 2009 and September 9th 2009. The Supreme Court made its ruling on 21st January of 2010 and to the surprise of many the ruling was in favor of Citizens United and gave corporations and unions the same rights and liberties that are enjoyed individuals. This thesis shall critically analyze whether corporations should or should enjoy the same liberties accorded to individuals.
SHOULD CORPORATIONS ENJOY THE SAME RIGHTS AS INDIVIDUALS?
The answer to the above question is no. This is based on several grounds. First and foremost, it is unrealistic for corporations to enjoy the same rights as citizens. Individual citizens do not only enjoy the right to freedom of speech as protected by the First Amendment but also the right to vote. Now that the courts have ruled in favor of corporations that they do have freedom of political speech, does this mean that they enjoy the right to elect public office holders too? The truth must be stated that the electioneering process is citizen oriented and focused affair. To this effect our leaders are referred to as public office holders rather than “corporation office holders.” If this is the case, then what business do the major corporations in the US have in speaking for or against candidates vying for political office? Yes we do acknowledge that just like the citizens, corporations too are protected by the First Amendment. But, electioneering communication should be limited to stake holders and corporations and not one of the stakeholders. Allowing corporations the freedom of electioneering communication implies that as a people we are forfeiting a right of self-representation to the corporate world.
In fact, as a result of their financial muscles, corporations seem to wielding more power than the ordinary citizenry. The fact that the Supreme Court ruling in the Citizens United case gave corporations equal rights as those enjoyed by citizens is out rightly preposterous. What the legal system did is to give away the only leeway the ordinary citizenry had over the corporate world. Presently, it is clear that corporations have more power over the political class than the people who elected these politicians to represent. Public office holders do not represent the electorate with the required integrity because they are at the mercy of their financial masters. This transcends the founding principle of the Americans; government is by and for the people. Thus, it can be concluded beyond reasonable doubt that the Citizens United ruling disfavors all Americans without the same financial muscle as corporations. This alludes to a bigger percentage of the American population; in fact almost all Americans fall under this category.
The United States of America is not a socialistic state. Thus this notion that everyone enjoys the same liberties should be totally disregarded. In fact even the law itself treats different categories of people in America differently. For instance, according to the constitution, citizens enjoy different liberties compared to non-citizens. The same applies to the fact members of a given professional are entitled to certain privileges that nonmembers are not. The same law goes ahead to treat minors differently from adults. According to the law, citizens can participate in federal election while noncitizens cannot and adults can buy sexually explicit materials while minors cannot. Even when the issue at hand is looked at, elementary and high school students do not have the right to criticize the school administration while college and university students do. Worldwide, the law has been known to clear, precise and categorical. Why should it be applied generally in USA and only when the electioneering communication and financing issue is concerned? Clearly, just like everything is categorical under the law, so should the freedom of speech in the electioneering process. The BCRA states clearly what freedoms the corporate world enjoys in an electioneering process; the judicial system and the corporate world should adhere to that.
The notion that the BCRA denies the corporates the freedom of speech as stipulated by the First Amendment is utterly misleading. This is the case because the BCRA clearly states that the rights of speech enjoyed by corporates and unions are only curtailed in the electioneering process. The BCRA also gives exclusions for this ban; corporates and unions can engage in electioneering communication only under a PAC. If the American workers form cooperative organizations for the purposes of collective bargaining, how hard is for the corporate world to adhere to the law and form PACs to advocate for their political agendas? Does it mean that corporations are exempt from following the law to the latter? Most news and newspaper agencies are corporations. These agencies do enjoy the freedom of speech and this why Americans and the rest of the world is continually informed via these agencies. Clearly, the rights of speech of corporations as prescribed by the first amendment are adhered to. So what is the basis of personifying corporations?
Finally, it must be mentioned that the pro- Citizens United Supreme Court ruling was politically motivated. This was indicated by the voting patterns of the 9-judge bench. The ruling was 5-4 in favor of the personification of corporates. Coincidentally, all the 5judges who ruled for the personification of the corporates especially in the electioneering process were Republicans while the remaining 4judges who were against the ruling were Democrats. To this effect, for the first time in over 2decades, the Republicans had an edge over the Democrats in legislative numbers in both the Senate and Congress in the 2010 elections. The 2010 election was also awash with corporate money like no other elections.it is saddening that the situation is likely to be repeated in the forthcoming elections this year if it remains unchecked. The corporate world will determine the next American president at the expense of the ordinary citizenry. Is this the example that the largest democracy in the world wants to set for other maturing democracies?
WORKS CITED
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