THE SUPREME COURT SPEAKS

Constitutional law is one of my hobby-horses, so I naturally read with care both the majority and the minority (Stevens) arguments in the recent case which allows corporations, labor unions & other such bodies to support their particular ´causes´. The fundamental argument rests on that great American fetish, ´free speech´.

As we all know, there are certain exclusions from this amendment in the Bill of Rights, the most recent of which is sanctioned as ´hate speech´, which would seem to be a sort of extention to the prohibition of shouting out ´fire´in a crowded theater. I would guess that we all would defend virgorously our right to say what we want, to publish it and diffuse it, no matter how unattractive we may find it: as in some forms of pornography, obscenity, etc.

But if I follow Mr. Justice Stevens argument, which fairly represents my own opinion, the entire Bill of Rights assumes that these rights inhere in individuals. In you and me. It is quite clear to me that a corporation, in both the technical sense as in Alcoa or Exxon, and in the broader sense of any large body organized to a single purpose, such as most labor unions, is not an individual, for no individual within that organization cam wield that corporation´s power or express its opinion. Corporations do not have a license to drive a car; unfortunately, a corporation can´t be jailed, nor can it vote, get a grade in college or, to descend the scale, make love and procreate real heirs and heiresses. Corporations do not go out for lunch,. their executives do, for unseemly hours. They are not people at all, they are a persona sole. It is a fiction designed to limit liability, something that private comopanies have to assume. If you sue a limited company for a defective product, the individual directors are liable up to the pre-established limit of that liability. While those of you who have ever had to deal with a corporation know that no human being is every likely to talk to you or respond.

That being so, how can a corporation (and unions are of the same breed) be protected by the same right as an individual? No doubt Mr. Obama´s objection, with a beady eye drawn on Justice Alito (the Majority opinion was written by Roberts), is that corporations (a) by the nature of their wealth and (b) quite possibly against the desires of some or even a majority of their shareholders, can exert an excessive power at certain times -- e.g. in the last fortnight of the Massachusetts election. To me, that argument does not stand. We have individual billionaires (protected by the First Amendment) who can and do spend just as much. There, reform would mean weaning the public of its dependence on advertising and feeding it doses of education to enable it to spot phoneys all on its lonesome.

Stevens´ dissent should be read. There are defects in the law which the Supreme Court was reviewing, but these Congress could remedy. But as Stevens argues, the First Amendment´s guarantee of free speech is applicable only to individuals, and to say otherwise will certainly further limit the freedom of individual speech.