This is the first in a series of three
articles discussing how the American people have lost a great deal of
their sovereignty, and thus their freedoms, since the creation of the Constitution.
Sovereignty is defined as having supreme
authority or jurisdiction over a geographical or judicial area. The American people, slowly over hundreds of
years and three major incursions, have lost a great deal of the sovereignty
that protected their freedoms. As their
areas of sovereignty have been eroded, so too have their civil rights, often
without them even realizing. This has
directly correlated with a decline in the standard of living for the average
American, and a widening of the wealth disparities that have caused a great
deal of social chaos.
The three major areas that the American
people have essentially lost control over are; their monetary system, their
security apparatus, and corporations.
The monetary system was taken from the people when the Federal Reserve
became the de facto authority on currency creation, thereby giving control over
monetary policy to a privately owned corporation. Recent revelations that the NSA keeps secrets
from the elected government show that the NSA is autonomous and
unaccountable. This has resulted in a
loss of diplomatic and foreign policy sovereignty. Finally corporations have gained many of the
rights of people, allowing them to sue governments for creating laws that
reduce profits, including future profits.
This has resulted in local and state governments fearful to legislate in
the best in interests of their people, for fear of lawsuits from affected
corporations. This loss of judicial
power is debilitating to governments, preventing them from reacting to changing
situations.
Working chronologically it makes sense
to start with the gradual rise of the Corporate Personhood. In 1819 the United States Supreme Court
(USSC) ruled in Dartmouth College versus Woodward that a charter was a
contract. This was exactly the opposite
of the original intent of the Founding Fathers, who had conceived them as
charters only, not contracts, and certainly not protected by the same
constitutional protections that guaranteed the freedoms of the people. The early corporations were typically
municipalities, not businesses, because the Revolution was fought not only
against Britain, but against the British East India Company, the Hudson Bay
Company, and the Massachusetts Bay Company.
Large corporate businesses were not seen to be compatible with freedom
by the Founding Fathers.
In 1886 the USSC case of Santa Clara
County versus Southern Pacific Railroad, it was established that corporations have
14th amendment constitutional protections, which gave the right to
due process and equal protection under the law.
Thus corporations could now sue other corporations, people, and
governments. It was cited as a precedent
for the Citizens United ruling. The next
year the USSC ruled in Mugler versus Kansas against Mugler, who claimed that
the outlawing of the sale of alcohol by the state of Kansas had destroyed the
value of the brewery that he had built only a few years earlier, at
considerable expense. He wanted
compensation for the lost value of the brewery (which could not easily be
converted to another use), but the court ruled that the state had the right to
create laws that sought to protect the health, welfare, safety or morals of the
people.
In 1919 Dodge versus Ford Motor Company
the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that the purpose of a corporation was to
maximize profits for its shareholders, rather than serve in the best interests
of society, as businesses had been viewed previously. The case involved the inventor of the
assembly line, Henry Ford, who was sued by the Dodge brothers, who together
owned 10% of the company. Ford wanted to
provide excellent salaries and expand the business with new factories in lieu
of giving out dividends, and the Dodge brothers were unhappy with his
charitable nature. The courts ruled with
greed over social well-being, and corporations grew immensely because of it.
In 1922 Pennsylvania Coal Company versus
Mahon the USSC gave corporations the right to sue governments for compensation
for lost profits (called takings) that resulted from new laws, including future
profits. Mugler vs Kansas had settled
the issue about whether the government could be sued for takings, ruling that
they could only be sued if the state physically seized property, and that any
regulations regarding the land was seen as the responsibility of government to
protect the health, safety, welfare and morals of the people. This new ruling completely contradicted the
ruling made thirty-five years earlier.
It not only gave the green light to businesses that they could ignore
the public interest, but it also put pressure on legislators to ignore the
public good for fear of deep pocketed lawsuits.
In 1976 Buckley versus Valeo rules that
the right to donate to political causes is the same as speech, and therefore
protected under the first amendment. It
also protected the idea of limits to donations given, but not on how much a
campaign can spend, or whether there are limits to how much an individual can
spend in support of a candidate (no limits).
This brings us to Citizens United versus the Federal Election Commision
in 2010, the case that ruled that money is speech, for all intents and
purposes. Does that make bribery
conversation?
Each of these cases has slowly eroded
the sovereignty of the American people, whose representatives fear to act in
the interest of their constituents because powerful corporate interests
threaten them with lawsuits for doing anything that hurts their bottom line, be
it laws intent on reducing pollution, tougher immigration enforcement,
improving worker standards as new data comes in, tightening restrictions on gun
sales, and a host of other issues that governments seem paralyzed in dealing
with.
