Krasmaniandevil t1_j5r7lmt wrote on January 25, 2023 at 12:10 AM

Reply to comment by Anathos117 in On Whether “Personhood” is a Normative or Descriptive Concept by ADefiniteDescription

That's how I originally thought the court would rule. A decision that permits aggregating small donations while rejecting unlimited donations from for-profit entities was floated by the FEC and explicitly rejected by the court. In other words, SCOTUS explicitly rejected a decision that would allow for your hypo but would restrict unlimited donations from for-profit companies. (Read section II D of the opinion, I don't have pincites).

Anathos117 t1_j5ra9w6 wrote on January 25, 2023 at 12:28 AM

Did you actually read the argument though? The alternatives available to the Supreme Court were to strike down so many laws and rulings that for-profit companies could directly engage in electioneering, or carve out an exemption so conditional that it effectively wouldn't be useful for anyone else, therefore infringing on rights it shouldn't. And the Court couldn't find against Citizens United after the FEC made clear that they believed they could and would censor political books in the wake of such a decision.

Krasmaniandevil t1_j5rd56y wrote on January 25, 2023 at 12:49 AM

I believe that a conditional exemption would have been consistent with judicial minimalism, stare decisis, and deference to a coequal branch.

Personally, I think Citizen's United is an intentionally overbroad ruling that's predicated on creating a false choice and erring on the side of our corporate overlords (look at their waiver analysis and tell me it's applied the same way in other cases).

I also think they entirely devalued the interests in actual corruption, perceived corruption, and foreign interference.

Anathos117 t1_j5rdsaq wrote on January 25, 2023 at 12:53 AM

> Personally, I think Citizen's United is an intentionally overbroad ruling that's predicated on creating a false choice and erring on the side of our corporate overlords (look at their waiver analysis and tell me it's applied the same way in other cases).

That's a far different statement than your original claim that "Corporate personhood is a legal fiction, or at least it was until Citizens United..."

Krasmaniandevil t1_j5rfajm wrote on January 25, 2023 at 1:04 AM

My argument: Citizens United characterized corporations as "associations of citizens" to reach a result that is functionally equivalent to saying corporations have 1A rights so long as they use a third party entity. This holding was not dictated by precedent, and the court consciously rejected an approach that would have adjudicated the question in Citizen's United's favor on narrower grounds without doing violence to the primary purpose of the statute(s) in question.