The Expansion of Corporate Constitutional Rights in the United States and Its Impact on Human Rights: Establishing a Mode of Thought within the Supreme Court Based on the Corporate Aggregate Entity-Theory

Abstract

Over the course of the past few decades, constitutional rights normally given to natural persons have increasingly been granted to corporations within the United States. Most of these changes started in the decade of the 1970s, as that was the time that corporations started to appeal to First Amendment rights in order to protect their interests in the face of governmental regulation and mounting criticisms from the public. This (steady) expansion of corporate rights under the concept of corporate personhood has been possible because of the Supreme Court, who voted in favor for corporations (both for-profit and non-profit) on multiple occasions whenever an appeal was made to the freedom of speech - and later religion – under the First Amendment. On first glance this seems to be a ludicrous trend, but a trend it has become nonetheless. Even more striking is the fact that it has been taking place by the graces of the highest court of the nation, which has been tasked to interpret the US Constitution in the face of complex and/or controversial cases – the single most important body of law within the United States. Despite the fact that the corporation, as an entity, is not mentioned once in this document, the Court has seen fit to attribute this actor with the freedom of speech (and later freedom of religion) under the First Amendment. These rights are not only constitutional, but also double as human rights which are normally attributed to persons of life and limb “purely by virtue of being human.” Logically, this expansion of corporate rights also has far-reaching implications for the protections of the same rights for natural persons, given the obvious asymmetrical dimensions of influence and power between the individual and the corporation. Therefore, this thesis asks the following question: How and why has corporate personhood advanced so strongly under the Supreme Court since the 1970s, and how does this impact the protections of freedom of speech and religion for natural persons? In order to answer this question, this thesis employs the aggregate-entity theory as a framework from which both the legal and ideological dimensions of decision making of the Supreme Court can be analyzed, and attempts to identify a specific mode of thought through which the subject of corporate personhood is approached and judged. This mode of thought is then used to analyze the possible implications for human rights enforcement within the United States itself.