Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Religion & Law Blogs -> Constitutionally Correct

Religion & Law

: Constitutionally Correct

Citizens United?s personhood debate and the take away for reproductive justice

By Alliance Alert

American Constitution Society blog: The decision [in Citizens United v. F.E.C.] not only overturned decades-old Supreme Court precedents, but it also disturbed a 100 year-old tradition of federal legislation placing limits on corporate campaign spending. Some reproductive rights attorneys immediately worried that the Court's perfunctory/pretextual consideration of stare decisis may be a dangerous foreshadowing for the Court's eventual next look at the abortion issue. (Interestingly, the lawyer who conceptualized the case for Citizens United is also longtime counsel for the National Right to Life.) A more immediate lesson, however, from Citizens United comes from the discussion of corporate personhood. While the U.S. Supreme Court squarely held that fetuses are not legal persons under the US Constitution in Roe v. Wade, there is an ongoing effort in the several states to redefine 'person' to include the 'unborn.'"

Full post as published by Constitutionally Correct on September 13, 2010 (boomark / email).