Legal Commentary

Corporate Personhood, con?t

By David Post

A friend forwarded me the link to this announcement by ?the liberal public relations firm,? Murray Hill, Inc., that it will follow up the Supreme Court?s decision in the Citizens United case by running for Congress. It?s absurd and tongue-in-cheek, of course, and pretty funny to boot. But the more I thought about it, being constitutionally enamored of crazy ideas, the harder I found it to articulate precisely why it?s such a crazy idea. What?s wrong, exactly, with having a representative in Congress consisting of not one person but a collection of people authorized to act on your behalf? If a significant number of people thought that, say, the Sierra Club (Inc.), or the Institute for Justice (Inc.), or the Center for Democracy and Technology (Inc.), or some other aggregation of individuals ? even, I suppose, Walmart, Inc. ? could better represent their interests in regard to the proper scope of Congressional activity, why would we deny them that choice? What is so sacred in the idea that only individual human beings are capable of exercising the representative function? I?m sure I?m missing something, and vigilant readers will be able to tell me what it is, but I must say that whatever it is, it?s not jumping out at me.

Full post as published by The Volokh Conspiracy on February 04, 2010 (boomark / email).