Religion & Law

I have a short take on the Citizens United case in the current issue of Commonweal. http://commonwealmagazine.org/who-approves-message

Among other things I argue that the act should not have been applied to the documentary film in question and it should not have been applied to an organization like Citizens United. More important, business corporations are required by law to be sociopathic. Sociopaths do not care about the impact of their actions on others. Business corporations likewise are required not to think of others, but to maximize shareholder returns. In increasingly competitive markets, they are forced to focus on short term competitive gain. (See Robert Reich, Supercapitalism). If business corporations advocate the common good it is entirely by accident. The legislatures of this country were wise in trying to control the behavior of the most wealth institutions in our society, particlarly given that their support of the common good could only happen by accident.

As the late Ed Baker argued so well in Human Liberty and Freedom of Speech, the market affects media corporations in ways different than it does business corporations, and media reform should be designed to make media corporations editors and writers even more free to mitigate the colonizing effects of advertisers and owners.My Commonweal piece does not make all these points, but it makes some of them as well as some arguments not included here.

cross posted at http://religiousleftlaw.typepad.com/religiousleftlawcom/