Corporate personhood doctrine persists despite Dred Scott and Lochner being disavowed

Evidence

Today’s law students are taught that Dred Scott and Lochner were wrong. But the Court’s defense of corporate personhood has continued to the present day. In 2010, the Court ruled in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that corporations’ political speech, including “independent expenditures”—spending in support of a candidate for office without making a direct contribution—was protected by the Constitution. The 2012 presidential election that followed Citizens United received nearly 600 percent more independent expenditures than the previous presidential election, in 2008, had. Of course, the founders could not see this far ahead—how the political concessions made to protect the human property in the Constitution would fundamentally shape the nation’s economy and the political institutions that governed it. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 553

Categorization

• XREF: This is a core example of the ‘slavery is foundational, not peripheral’ reframing argument: constitutional concessions for slavery causally shaping Citizens United-era corporate power.