I have had the opportunity to work for two publicly traded corporations in my very young career. I worked for three years for the first company and for the second company, only a 3 month internship (but hopefully I’ll be there on a more permanent basis soon). Concentrating on my first stint with a publicly traded company, over the course of my three years with the firm I had the opportunity to interact with hundreds of different people in the corporation. I had the opportunity to work with the company’s CEO, CFO, COO, and numerous other members of the senior management team on a daily basis. In three years with the company I met with hundreds of different employees from every department in the corporation. Although I had the opportunity to meet with practically every single person I worked with over the course of my three years there, there was one person, oddly enough, who I never did have the opportunity to meet. That person, is the corporation itself. Imagine that, having met and built a relationship with everyone from the company’s CEO, to the head of the maintenance department – but never having the opportunity to meet the most important person, the corporation itself. Maybe I did not come into the office early enough in the morning to meet the corporation or perhaps I would leave work too early before the corporation got back to the office. All I know is, in three years I met every single person who worked there and find it weird that I never ran into “the corporation”.
In the recent US Supreme Court decision, Citizens Untied v. Federal Election Commission, the court said that a corporation is entitled to First Amendment protection as it pertains to freedom of speech vis-à-vis campaign ad spending. By now you know that my opening about having never met “the corporation” was a ridiculous exaggeration, perhaps a ridiculous over-simplification. Of course a corporation is not a real person, but instead, a creation of law, which represents an association of persons, and thus has the same First Amendment rights as an individual person would have. But is this what the founding fathers had in mind – that a corporation, like a person, should have a voice politically? A Corporation was a creation of law that was meant to provide for a way to raise capital and spread risk in order to facilitate capitalism. Did our founding fathers envision a world where corporations would raise campaign funds? American democracy is government for the people, by the people – not by the corporations. Corporations facilitate capitalism; people (persons) facilitate democracy. Do you disagree? If you do, why not then give corporations the right to vote? What greater expression of a person’s First Amendment rights than the right to vote? Ridiculous you say? Corporations can’t vote! Well maybe they aren’t persons either.
Some have argued that the corporation or the “corporate culture” can corrupt a person – this notion of the corporation or the corporate culture corrupting a person is a fiction. While working for publicly traded companies I’ve never once had a corporation tell me what to do, or what not to do. I’ve had people (CEO, CFO, Senior Management, other co-workers) tell me to do certain things (or not do certain things), but never ever did I have “the corporation” tell me directly to do anything. That’s because a corporation is not a person. A person is a person. The notion that is a corporation is a person is a legal fiction. As a creature of law, a corporation is given some “human-like” qualities only out of convenience- not because anyone really believes they are persons.
The Supreme Court didn’t get the memo though. For the Supreme Court, corporations aren’t a legal fiction, they’re not a creation of law, they are real people, entitled to the First Amendment protection. I’ll accept that (although I don’t agree with it), but then let them vote. I challenge the Supreme Court to grant a corporation the right to vote – and if they don’t grant them this fundamental First Amendment right – then I challenge them to explain to all of us that it’s not because a corporation is not a person.
If the right to vote should be granted to a corporation, then who has that right? This article has just outlined the fact that a corporation is not a person. Instead, a corporation is “a creation of law, which represents an association of persons.” So, if a corporation is a person made of a bunch of people each owning a piece of the pie, who gets to vote? The principal of voting is based on the idea of one voice one vote. Here, multiple people come together to form one person. Therefore, assuming that a corporation does have the right to vote, who votes for the corporation? Perhaps if the Supreme Court can answer this question, then maybe someday the corporation will have the right to vote. After all, the lack of the right to vote would constitute taxation without representation.
ReplyDeleteGiving corporations the right to vote would lead to the incorporation of two voters for the purpose of casting three votes. So the principal would be changed to one voice, one and one-half votes. Just doesn't have the same ring to it.
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