Free speech? Wrong question.
On Thursday, the Supreme Court struck down several key restrictions on corporate campaign contributions. While many lament the expected influx of yet more corporate cash into an already compliant political system, does anybody really think McCain-Feingold had accomplished much of an improvement? These regulations only affect those who cannot afford the lawyers, accountants, and other professionals who spend their careers finding ways to circumvent the spirit of the laws.
The real issue here is not whether corporations should be involved in the political process. It’s also not whether they should have first amendment protections. Regarding monetary contributions from anybody to any candidate for public office as free speech is entirely beside the point. The most important and pressing matter is whether these artificial persons called corporations can speak; whether legal fictions can spend money. It’s whether the Constitution protects what doesn’t actually exist.
The court simply let stand the fantastic notion that an abstraction composed of contracts and assets, a figment that can do or say nothing without human beings doing for it, can engage in anything qua a corporation. As such, an opportunity to overturn a century of erroneous precedent was squandered. Once again, in spite of an improvement in the consistency of its approach to the narrow free speech issue, the court preserved a much more fundamental complexity. The ruling and dissent reflect a labored reasoning stemming from unquestioned premises. </em>
A horrible ruling, concreting an even worse concept.
