Would you like to neutralize corporations’ ability to get so many GOOD laws declared unconstitutional? There’s an “app” for that—-an approach, that is.
Seriously, do you really think it’s unconstitutional to require labels on GMO food? Or to prohibit a dangerous and ecologically harmful activity like fracking? What kind of a screwy constitution are we talking about here?
What if the Martians (or Plutonians) landed and asked why we permitted a gigantic CAFO to produce inferior food while threatening aquifers, ecosystems, community, and quality of life? Not to mention, underselling and disadvantaging local organic food producers. Would we say, yeah, it’s a bummer but we have this sacred document called the Constitution and it says we, uh, have to allow this?
I use the word “magic” (as in corporate magic) advisedly. Magic is misdirection plus mechanics. Almost always, the misdirection (“Watch my right hand carefully, now…”) is more critical than the mechanics. (Dexterity is a matter of practice: just watch bulbous-fingered men playing mandolin or tweeting.) The same is true about how corporations get laws they don’t like voided by courts.
Obviously, in order to counter magic you have to understand it.
Over many decades, corporate lawyers convinced judges that corporations are protected by the Constitution against government action. (A portion, but not all, of these protections comes via so-called “corporate personhood.”) After a high court confirmed these judicial interpretations, legislatures incorporated the changes into law. (This is still going on today, but the groundwork was laid long ago.)
Result: The Constitution both created a government, and set up provisions to protect people from oppressive government. Then the government (state governments, mostly) created corporations as its agents. These corporate agents, really extensions of government, then began claiming that they were more like human persons than creatures of the state, and therefore deserved protection against the government that created them. (If you feel dizzy, you’re getting it. The topology of the situation is a snake shaped like a Mobius strip eating its tail.)
In a nutshell: A corporation (set up by a government professing to act on behalf of the people) claims the protections of people against government, and wields the power of government against people. This is having your cake and eating it too.
Once even a single corporation wins recognition of an expanded constitutional protection, that protection then extends to ALL corporations. They don’t even have to send each other memos.
Quickie example: A county believes a certain business corporation (BadCorp) is reprehensible in its methods, labor policies, and general environmental practices, so it passes a law banning that corporation from doing business within its jurisdiction. (For an example, read up on the anti-chain store laws of the early 20th century. Check page 61 of my book.) BadCorp files a lawsuit claiming that its 14th Amendment constitutional right to equal protection is violated, because other similar corporations are not banned, while BadCorp is singled out. In other words, BadCorp was discriminated against. (I kid you not, this is the language used.) After that (and this started in the late 19th century), all the other corporations went whining to federal courts to claim that they were discriminated against, too. As a result, this and other corporate constitutional protections accreted over the years have made it next to impossible to pass legislation with real effect to control corporations.
That’s the mechanics part. I’ve been writing about it for two decades, and there’s a solid century-and-a-half of legal scholarship on it. But regular people don’t read that, either because it sounds too intimidating or boring, or because…corporate misdirection has deflected their attention.
Instead of “Keep your eye on my right hand…” the misdirection here begins with people in dark, voluminous robes intoning the word “unconstitutional.” The first misdirection is that even the suggestion that something is unconstitutional makes many people back off (and stop looking into it).
It gets worse, because the misdirection implies that the Constitution itself actually says that corporations have rights (mostly from the Bill of Rights), and protections from other clauses scattered throughout the document. IT DOESNT. Just read it. (Or some of my short vignettes illustrating the point).
The notion that corporations have constitutional protections comes not from the Constitution but from judicial decisions made since the early 19th century. The judges that made these decisions, almost without exception, were wealthy white men with considerable property. Most also had experience working for the railroads, banks, and other dominant corporations of their day.(See pages 76-77 in my book.)
Decommissioning Corporate Magic: The App(roach)
Before your eyes glaze over, consider this. Look up from your screen. People who can install and use numerous apps on complex electronic devices that blink, beep, thump, vibrate and arpeggio at us from all compass directions—are without doubt capable of understanding the points of constitutional law (there, I said it) that keep corporations for the most part out of reach of citizen legislation.
Hundreds of local communities have tried it already, and are making real progress. Visit one or two, to see how that app(roach) works.