Title: Constitutional Adjudication, Free Expression, and the Fashionable Art of Corporation Bashing
Abstract: Constitutional Adjudication, Free Expression, and Fashionable Art of Corporation Bashing BRANDISHING THE FIRST AMENDMENT: COMMERCIAL EXPRESSION IN AMERICA. By Tamara R. Piety. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 2012. 342 pages. $70.00.I. IntroductionLate in 2011, Massachusetts Congressman James P. McGovern proposed a constitutional amendment to limit terms People, person, or citizens as used in Constitution to natural persons.1 As to provisions that do not explicitly use terms People, person, or citizens, such as First Amendment, new amendment would clarify that We people who ordain and establish this Constitution intend rights protected by this Constitution to be rights of natural persons, with goal and effect of rendering impossible any constitutional recognition of corporations.2 Whatever one thinks about merits of this proposal, there is little doubt that it taps into widespread confusion about and anger over Supreme Court's holding in its 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that the First Amendment does not allow political speech restrictions based on a speaker's corporate identity.3 The widespread reaction of both legal scholars and educated lay people to Citizens United decision was that it is preposterous to believe that a corporation could actually possess constitutional rights because a corporation is neither a person nor a citizen.4Most recently, debate over corporate First Amendment rights has been impacted by interesting and controversial-if seriously flawed- new book by Professor Tamara Piety, Brandishing First Amendment: Commercial Expression in America.5 Professor Piety's book develops an elaborate constitutional argument that all but excludes speech by profitmaking corporations from First Amendment's protective scope.This widespread reaction, while perhaps politically understandable, reveals a complete lack of familiarity with well-established precepts of American constitutional law. In reality, Citizens United Court's recognition of a corporation's ability to invoke constitutional rights was nothing new. Corporations have been invoking numerous constitutionalized and subconstitutionalized rights in court for many years.6 Indeed, if Congressman McGovern's amendment ever managed to become law, one wonders how provision's supporters would feel about removal of New York Times and Washington Post-both profit-making corporations, of course-from First Amendment's protective reach.Most of battles over constitutional status of corporations were long ago resolved in favor of allowing corporations to invoke constitutional guarantees. Today, corporate standing to challenge constitutional violations is so well established that it usually goes unnoticed. Corporations regularly invoke Due Process Clause,7 Dormant Commerce Clause,8 Diversity Clause,9 separation of powers protections,10 and Sixth and Seventh Amendment rights to jury trial.11 Even when it comes to First Amendment right of free expression, powerful corporate owners of newspapers and broadcast networks regularly invoke First Amendment without slightest controversy over their corporate form.12 Moreover, since 1976, Supreme Court has provided continually expanding First Amendment protection to commercial speech, which is invariably disseminated by profit-making corporations.13Such practices should hardly come as a surprise. After all, if a corporation is defrauded in marketplace by a contractor or competitor, would anyone seriously challenge that corporation's ability to resort to judicial process to remedy legal wrong done to it? Our economy would no doubt quickly degenerate into a state of chaos if corporations were denied opportunity to vindicate their legal rights in court. But if no doubt exists that corporations have standing to vindicate subconstitutional rights and protections, how, purely as a logical matter, could they be categorically denied opportunity to invoke nation's highest law, United States Constitution? …
Publication Year: 2013
Publication Date: 2013-05-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 1
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