Citizens United: Judicial Rhetoric and Corporate Constitutional Rights
Open Access
- Author:
- Fleming, Meghan
- Area of Honors:
- Communication Arts and Sciences
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Arts
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Margaret M Michels, Thesis Supervisor
Mary High, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- law
Citizens United
corporations
Constitution
constitutional law
rhetoric
constitutive rhetoric
First Amendment
campaign finance law
judicial rhetoric
corporate rights
free speech
constitutional rights - Abstract:
- On January 21, 2010, the United States Supreme Court issued its decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, ruling that limitations on corporate funding for communications in political campaigns was unconstitutional, as it infringed on a corporation’s freedom of speech. The decision caused an uproar in America for people who were angered that corporations were given the same sacred constitutional right that natural citizens possess. However, what these Americans did not realize was that Citizens United was the culmination of a two-century civil rights movement conducted by corporationalists in which corporations incrementally earned basic civil liberties intended for natural citizens. This thesis will trace that two-century civil rights movement by first delving into the history of corporations in America and their strong, but little known or appreciated foothold in American democracy from its infancy. Since corporations were never explicitly included in the Constitution, corporate executives utilized constitutional challenges to laws that regulated their business, and leveraged the U.S. Supreme Court to use its power of judicial review to strike down these laws and create corporate rights. An analysis of the intervening years before Citizens United will establish a pattern of reasoning in Supreme Court decisions for and against the expansion of corporate rights. This thesis will use constitutive rhetoric as a conceptual framework for understanding the duty and power of the Supreme Court and the impact of their rhetorical choices. By examining the judicial rhetoric in majority and dissenting opinions, this analysis will shed insight into the building blocks the Justices used in deciding Citizens United and how that decision influenced the further expansion of corporate rights under the Constitution. At the conclusion of this thesis, the reader will see the legal and societal implications of the expansion of corporate constitutional rights, with specific evidence from Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores (2014), which extended Citizens United and granted corporations the freedom of religion. The evolution of corporate constitutional rights is an interesting and significant progression in American constitutional law. This careful examination of the influential Supreme Court decisions that shaped this evolution will explain how corporations earned the same constitutional rights as natural American citizens.