This undue imposition of corporate political interests onto individuals is a direct result of the FEC case and its improper definition of corruption. The corruption that manifests itself in today’s political arena stems from the increases in independent political expenditures by corporations with limited transparency that magnify the perception of a corrupt political system to citizens. Consequently, in today’s American political environment, perception is reality, because it has been found that as this perception of corruption increases, citizen disillusionment and disengagement increase comparably. However, not only do these corporate interests impose on individuals who are completely unassociated from the world of business, they hurt the
…show more content…
The duty of loyalty requires the various directors of corporations to not lock their personal interests to that of the company or its shareholders. Though, as a result of the Citizens United decision, the failures of companies and their executives to exercise this duty of loyalty has only increased due to the case’s decision which allows for corporations’ unlimited “political spending decisions [which] may be a product not merely of a business judgment regarding the firm’s strategy, but … of the directors’ and executives’ own political preferences and beliefs.” The notion that this idea creates is that through the Citizens United decision and its various aforementioned implications, corporate interests have corroded the political process by influencing and limiting the political influence of individual citizens (and shareholders) in an empirical, substantiated, and real way that the majority failed to see in their decisions. Through the court’s decision, the majority mistakenly attempted to infuse campaign law with a false interpretation of corporate personhood: corporations are people and like individual citizens, they are entitled to the same constitutional rights. However, corporations are not people in the truest sense and consequently have different rights and different scopes of access to those rights, for example, corporations do not have fifth amendment rights. Thus, the courts must recognize this inconsistency in defining people, corporations, and their rights in order to create a legally accurate, morally valid, and democratically inspired interpretation of both the political election process and the campaign finance reform
The duty of loyalty requires the various directors of corporations to not lock their personal interests to that of the company or its shareholders. Though, as a result of the Citizens United decision, the failures of companies and their executives to exercise this duty of loyalty has only increased due to the case’s decision which allows for corporations’ unlimited “political spending decisions [which] may be a product not merely of a business judgment regarding the firm’s strategy, but … of the directors’ and executives’ own political preferences and beliefs.” The notion that this idea creates is that through the Citizens United decision and its various aforementioned implications, corporate interests have corroded the political process by influencing and limiting the political influence of individual citizens (and shareholders) in an empirical, substantiated, and real way that the majority failed to see in their decisions. Through the court’s decision, the majority mistakenly attempted to infuse campaign law with a false interpretation of corporate personhood: corporations are people and like individual citizens, they are entitled to the same constitutional rights. However, corporations are not people in the truest sense and consequently have different rights and different scopes of access to those rights, for example, corporations do not have fifth amendment rights. Thus, the courts must recognize this inconsistency in defining people, corporations, and their rights in order to create a legally accurate, morally valid, and democratically inspired interpretation of both the political election process and the campaign finance reform