Lets Talk About Citizens United

[Heywood]

corporation was only intended to be an accounting tool, not as a means to create a literal person in the constitutional rights sense.

Three guys get together and form a corporation to do janitorial work. While driving back from a job. The corporate truck is pulled over and ceased by the cops who then sell it to buy doughnuts without any due process.

If corporations do not have constitutional rights, this very scenario could happen. If sued, the cops could simply claim that since corporations do not have constitutional rights...the corporation does not have standing to bring the suit against them in the first place. The judge agrees because the supreme court tells him corporations don't have constitutional rights....and the case is dismissed.

Corporations are tools used by people and people do not loose their constitutional rights just because they get together and incorporate. In the above scenario the corporation could sue the cops because the court has actually ruled that for purposes of law the corporation has constitutional rights. They ruled this way because people who make up the corporation have constitutional rights.

By declaring corporations persons for the purpose of law...we preserve our constitutional rights. This is why the Citizens United decision was a good one.