US Constitution benefits corporations, not powerless people: Study
Wealthy US corporations have begun to replace powerless individuals as direct beneficiaries of the First Amendment to the US Constitution, obtaining economic gain from others without reciprocating, according to a new study.
Nearly half of First Amendment challenges now benefit business corporations and trade groups, instead of powerless people like students, prisoners, civil rights activists and antiwar protesters, says John C. Coates, who teaches business law at Harvard University.
“Corporations have begun to displace individuals as the direct beneficiaries of the First Amendment,” Professor Coates wrote. The trend of the “corporate takeover of the First Amendment” is “recent but accelerating,” he added.
The First Amendment, among other rights, protects the freedom of speech, the right to peaceful assembly and the freedom of the press.
“It’s not just Citizens United,” he said in an interview with the New York Times, referring to the 2010 US Supreme Court ruling decision that allowed unlimited independent spending by corporations in elections. His study analyzed First Amendment challenges from businesses to a variety of economic regulations.
Professor Coates found in his study that since 1976, the average number of First Amendment cases in the Supreme Court involving businesses started to rise to 2.2 a year from 1.5, and the number involving individuals started to fall, to 3.6 from 4.3.
Such lawsuits have a harmful impact for both free market and the rule of law, Coates says. Corporations are diverting resources from research and innovation to lawsuits in order to institute new regulations in their personal interests at the expense of shareholders, consumers, and employees, he wrote.
“Concentrated, moneyed interests, represented by those in control of the country’s largest business corporation are increasingly able to turn law into a lottery, reducing law’s predictability, impairing property rights, and increasing the share of the economy devoted to rent-seeking rather than productive activity,” he wrote.
AHT/GJH
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