We the corporation in order to form

Willard Mitt Romney, better known as Mitt Romney, gave rise to the famous line “Corporations are people my friend” as he was speaking to a crowd explaining a way to fund entitlement programs was to “raise taxes on people,”.  A protester interrupted him and  urged Romney to raise taxes on corporations. Romney replied  “Corporations are people my friend”.   Now in fairness to Mitt he was referring to the issue of taxing corporations but since then the line has come to stand for the issue of corporate personhood and their ability to do things like spend unlimited funds on political races.

Currently, the fourteenth amendment is what many Republicans and Libertarians quote as one of the original sources of empowerment for corporations.  It was one of the supporting arguments granting individual rights to corporations.

O. Mitt

But the concept of corporate personhood dates back much further.  In a story lost in the sands of time, forgotten by history, more than a long, long, long time ago- Mitt Romney’s great- great-great grandfather Obadiah Mitt Romney was the first to come up with the idea that a corporation is a person.  The Civil War had accelerated the growth of manufacturing and the power of the men who owned the large corporations.   Businessman J. P. Morgan, steel makers Charles M. Schwab and Andrew Carnegie, and railroad owners Cornelius Vanderbilt and Jay Gould created corporations that influenced legislation at the local, state, and federal levels.  Obadiah Milton known as O. Mitt stood in front of his corporation owning friends and said “Corporations are people, my friend,” with a wink and nod.  He continued “I’ll argue that the Fourteen Amendment grants us that right.”

“No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

O. Mitt was good to his word.   In 1886 he got it on record with a Supreme Court ruling, “The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does.”

Boo-yah, Slam dunk baby – O. Mitt had it on record with the U.S. Supreme court that the Fourteenth Amendment applies to corporations.  Game changer!  Hello Super Pacs!  It has since served as one of the supporting arguments for Corporate Personhood.

T. Ruth

Now O. Mitt had a half sister Tonya Ruth Romney who was the black sheep in the family due to her progressive and liberal views.  So foreign was she to the Romney family views, that the patriarchal half brother O. Mitt even tried exorcism to cure her.   Tonya was known as T. Ruth to her friends. 

T. Ruth knew her half-brother, O. Mitt was prone to leaving facts out.  She first informed him that the 14th amendment was written in support of the 13th amendment banned slavery.
She made a point to inform him that  he had conveniently forgot to mention that the reference in the 1886 Supreme Court  ruling was in the summarizing headnotes and not in the actual ruling.  The headnote was written by the court reporter in the case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company (1886).  It was a United States Supreme Court case dealing with taxation of railroad properties .  The court reporter just happened to be the former president of Newburgh and New York Railway Company, John C. Bancroft. Bancroft indicated in the headnotes that corporations were "persons" while the actual court decision itself purposefully avoided specific statements regarding the equal protection clause as applied to corporations.  T. Ruth then pointed out to O. Mitt that headnotes are not defined as work of the Court, but are simply the work of the Reporter. In 1906,the Surpreme Court ruled that headnotes have no legal standing and therefore do not set precedent.

T. Ruth continued that the primary purpose of the 14th Amendment was to protect freed slaves.   Section 1 of the 14^th Amendment formally defines citizenship and protects a person's civil and political rights from being abridged or denied by any state.  It was written in response to the Black Codes that southern states had passed in the wake of the Thirteenth Amendment. The Black Codes restricted former slave’s rights.

One of the original authors of the 14th Judge Samuel F. Miller considered the purpose of the Amendment in 1872, only six years after the Amendment had become law, when the court was "called upon for the first time to give construction to these articles

“The most cursory glance at these articles discloses a unity of purpose, when taken in connection with the history of the times, which cannot fail to have an important bearing on any question of doubt concerning their true meaning. Nor can such doubts, when any reasonably exist, be safely and rationally solved without a reference to that history, for in it is found the occasion and the necessity for recurring again to the great source of power in this country, the people of the States, for additional guarantees of human rights, additional powers to the Federal government; additional restraints upon those of the States. Fortunately, that history is fresh within the memory of us all, and its leading features, as they bear upon the matter before us, free from doubt. We repeat, then, in the light of this recapitulation of events, almost too recent to be called history, but which are familiar to us all, and on the most casual examination of the language of these amendments, no one can fail to be impressed with the one pervading purpose found in them all, lying at the foundation of each, and without which none of them would have been even suggested; we mean the freedom of the slave race, the security and firm establishment of that freedom, and the protection of the newly made freeman and citizen from the oppressions of those who had formerly exercised unlimited dominion over him.”

T. Ruth took another tact. She pointed that as the 19th century as the Industrial Revolution evolved. The favored form for large businesses became the corporation because it provided a means to raise investment capital.  Corporations didn’t climb from a primordial soup granted unalienable rights from their creator, T. Ruth said.  Corporations as legal entities have always been able to perform commercial activities, similar to a person acting as a sole business person, such as entering into a contract or owning property. So corporations have always had a 'legal personality' for the purposes of conducting business while shielding individual stockholders from personal liability.  A corporation is a fictional entity developed to facilitate business and protect individuals. Because they same some basic rights they are no more a person than a hamster. You can put a carrot in blender but you can't do the same to a hamster or a person.  We grant certain rights to things. We don't let hamsters vote.

In conclusion T. Ruth then quoted from Justice Black and Justice Douglas dissent in the Supreme Court's 1957 decision in United States v. United Auto Workers.

“We deal here with a problem that is fundamental to the electoral process and to the operation of our democratic society. It is whether a union can express its views on the issues of an election and on the merits of the candidates, unrestrained and unfettered by the Congress. The principle at stake is not peculiar to unions. It is applicable as well to associations of manufacturers, retail and wholesale trade groups, consumers' leagues, farmers' unions, religious groups, and every other association representing a segment of American life and taking an active part in our political campaigns and discussions. It is as important an issue as has come before the Court, for it reaches the very vitals of our system of government. Under our Constitution, it is We The People who are sovereign. The people have the final say. The legislators are their spokesmen. The people determine through their votes the destiny of the nation. It is therefore important -- vitally important -- that all channels of communication be open to them during every election, that no point of view be restrained or barred, and that the people have access to the views of every group in the community.”

Will T. Ruth triumphant over the her O. Mitt and his omissions?  Stay tuned for the next CakeorDemocracy blog entry as O. and T. Ruth debate the right of corporations to spend unlimited funds for political races.