Many of us are concerned about the recent Supreme Court ruling that removes the restriction on corporate funded political speech during campaigns. We believe that a lack of restrictions on the ability of corporations to contribute to political speech will come to mean that they will dominate political speech, thereby having a dominant effect on political opinions, political candidates and politicians to the detriment of individual citizens.
Some of us believe that this issue can be addressed by finally and directly undermining the notion of corporate personhood. In essence, my question and suggestion for approaching this problem do just that. It appears from the information I've gleaned reading around a bit, that the majority opinion is based on the notion that the corporation has an unqualified right to engage in political speech because it is an association of individuals, all of whom individually bear that right. They viewed this issue as one of a compelling government interest vs. a First Amendment right, and naturally, in such a contest, the right must win out.
Rights theory suggests that an individual has a right to the extent that a similar right can conceivably be had by all, or that the right attaches to an office or position that can reasonably be obtained by anyone, though not necessarily everyone, and where that position is part of an institution that is either necessary for the protection of rights, or that provides some benefit without infringing upon anybody's existing rights. Institutions such as businesses and corporations are thought to be of this latter variety. Groups or associations of individuals don't have rights by virtue of being groups, but by virtue of being groups of people.
Therefore, the corporate right to speech must be a special right that accrues to a position or set of positions within a corporation. The CEO and CCO gain the right to use corporate funds and employees for the creation and dissemination of political speech, where, outside of their offices, they have only the right to use their own personal funds for such speech-making. It seems to me that it is this right that must be undermined, for it serves no legitimate purpose in a classical understanding of market economics, and under that same understanding, infringes upon the speech rights of others.
A corporation, as an association of individuals for the purpose of making profit, has at least three different kinds of individuals involved in it, employees, managers and investors. Investors supply the money to buy supplies, business infrastructure and pay employees, employees provide the labor needed to create additional value from the resources purchased by the capital, and managers control the flows of capital and applications of labor to maximize value created. Managers are asserting a right to make and disseminate political speech using the capital provided by investors and the labor bought from employees.
Classically, investors are thought to invest their money solely to gain a return on that investment. Presumably, so long as the crafting of political speech by managers results in a greater return, then investors wouldn't have a problem with the speech. But this undermines investors as individual citizens, and glosses over a transfer of rights that was never implicitly or explicitly agreed to. Because managers use the capital of investors to create their political speech, they have appropriated the speech rights of those investors for their own use.
Now, finally, we come to my question. Investors are free to use their money to make political speech, or to try to gain a return by financing some corporation in its market activities. Since business managers have taken that investment and used it to make political speech, in apparent opposition to the will of the investor, aren't they at least liable to be sued by the investor? Indeed, if viewed a certain way, wouldn't this constitute a type of fraud or theft? It seems to me that if we can get a couple of investors to sue some CEOs who use corporate funds for political speech, in class-action suits of course, that might make them wary of engaging in political speech.
It also seems to me that it would behoove us to pass a law that says that corporate managers are committing criminal fraud if they use corporate funds to craft and disseminate political speech without gaining consent for that speech from every one of their investors.