Consent Of The Governed

As late as 1840, state legislators closely supervised the operation of corporations, allowing them to be created only for very specific public benefits, such as the building of a highway or a canal. Corporations were subject to a variety of limitations: a finite period of existence, limits to the amount of property they could own, and prohibitions against one corporation owning another. After a period of time deemed sufficient for investors to recoup a fair profit, the assets of a business would often revert to public ownership. In some states, it was even a felony for a corporation to donate to a political campaign.

But in the headlong rush into the Industrial Age, legislators and the courts stripped away almost all of those limitations. By the 1860s, most states had granted owners limited liability, waiving virtually all personal accountability for an institution's cumulative actions. In 1886, without comment, the United States Supreme Court ruled for corporate owners in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, allowing corporations to be considered "persons," thereby opening the door to free speech and other civil rights under the Bill of Rights; and by the early 1890s, states had largely eliminated restrictions on corporations owning each other. By 1904, 318 corporations owned forty percent of all manufacturing assets. Corporate owners were replacing de Tocqueville's "equality of conditions" with what one writer of the time, W. J. Ghent, called "the new feudalism... characterized by a class dependence rather than by a personal dependence."

Throughout the twentieth century, federal courts have granted U.S. corporations additional rights that once applied only to human beings -- including those of "due process" and "equal protection." Corporations, in turn, have used those rights to thwart democratic efforts to check their growth and influence...

...History repeats itself. In the course of asserting their sovereign rights, the citizens of rural Pennsylvania have undergone a profound change in personal identity and political consciousness not unlike that of their forebears. As historian Lawrence Henry Gipson noted, "The period from 1760 to 1775 is really the history of the transformation of the attitude of the great body of colonials from acquiescence in the traditional order of things to a demand for a new order." People who for generations had considered themselves loyal Englishmen suddenly declared themselves to be citizens of a new nation, one based on the sovereignty of its citizens. Veloria believes we are at a similar juncture today. "I have faith that the American people will stand up for themselves and for democracy. They can only be pushed so far."

JEFFREY KAPLAN'S essays and articles have appeared in many regional and national newspapers and periodicals. He lives and works in Berkeley, California. This article has been abridged for the web. To read the full article, go to: Consent of the Governed

To read the original article, go to: https://secure.oriononline.org/orionsoc/freeom.cfm

Thoughts on America Initiative and its dissemination of Citizens Dissent, featuring the full text version of Wendell Berry's landmark New York Times statement "A Citizen's Response."
http://www.oriononline.org/pages/os/media/ThoughtsInitiative.html A Body Politic


Note: Consent of the Governed Consent of the Governed https://secure.oriononl... http://www.oriononline....