Citizens United v. Animal Sentience
Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission was a 2010 Supreme Court decision that granted to corporations (and unions) the same protection under the First Amendment as individuals. Progressives roundly and wisely derided this decision as a travesty of justice, if not common sense. Forget the fact that conceding freedom of expression to an abstract pile of capital (which is essentially what a corporation is) ranks high on the stupidity scale. What really riles me is that the ruling was a shameless instance of power pandering to power under the guise of legal legitimacy.
The state was, in this case, essentially deploying (and distorting) the U.S. Constitution to protect and promote the conscious prevarication endemic to crony capitalism. Corporations sought moral equivalence with individuals for the sole purpose of being able to lie. Indeed, they want to legally lie to us about their products and services without paying the due consequences when those lies harm us and the society we work to nurture. When intentionally misleading and even knowingly bogus advertisements are deemed legally justified, the entire apparatus that is our nation suffers death by a thousands cuts, almost imperceptibly, one sinister little slice after another. Integrity vanishes from commercial culture and, in due time, we’ll be nothing but a shell of a nation run by a 467 super-rich airheads.
Histrionics aside, no matter how I feel about Citizens, it’s the law of the land. Which makes me wonder: if the Supreme Court can grant to an insensate lump of capital protected freedom of expression, how can it possibly deny such protection to sentient animals with clear wants and needs that—when given the chance— they routinely act upon to fulfill? If the Supreme Court recognizes the First Amendment rights of an abstraction, why not a living individual? True, animals have been deemed to have some rights, for some animals, in some places, at some times. But why shouldn’t protection be comprehensively federal? Why shouldn’t the first amendment apply to them? Why shouldn’t animals be given the right to choose not to walk into a stun gun? Not to lock herself in a crate? Not to be mutilated? Not to be killed and eaten? Given freedom of expression, they’d certainly choose to act contrary to how we treat them. Why do we deny them this choice?
Our thinking about animals and society is so stunted (or non-existent) that many of us have no problem tolerating the imputation of rights to impersonal legal fictions while ignoring the preexisting natural rights of sentient individual beings. What makes this glaring inconsistency all the more galling is that the food corporations that have now managed to codify their systematically packaged lies as legally sound are the same organizations that brutally exploit the animals that are far more ethically eligible to have their interests protected. If the First Amendment is going to be extended beyond individual humans, it should apply to animals before it does the corporations that kill them.
Citizens is about legal personhood and its implications for animal liberation are enormous. Anyone interested should look at the Non Human Rights Project site (Steve Wise) [full disclosure: i work with them sometimes] and the work of Prof. Chris Stone at UCLA “Should Trees Have Rights”
John, it’s been awhile since I’ve read about Steve Wise. As I had understood (or misunderstood) his position previously, he would give rights to “intelligent” animals and not to others, which sounded a lot like Singer. Was/is this correct? I appreciate your clarification.
Thanks John. Something told me you’d be all over this one.
James
The U.S. -and largely the world- is still ruled by the maxim: Might makes right. This is certainly the case for nonhuman animals. It has nothing to do with democracy or fairness or justice. Money rules.
Notice that as personhood rights are being granted to legal entities like corporations and unions, real citizens are being incarcerated without trial just by declaring them “enemy combatants.” Both Nature and animals have been accorded the status of “enemy combatants” in our system unless they are specifically granted legal protection. I wish Prof. Wise and Prof. Stone the very best in their endeavors, but there is a long, uphill struggle ahead of them and us.
I think that’s an apt comparison — like enemy combatants, animals and nature are denied inherent rights — it fits nicely with a criminal justice system that is despicably racist.
An hour ago I finished reading the chilling novel “Animals” by Don LePan, which mijnheer told us about in James’ much-heralded blog, “The Literary Vegan” (http://james-mcwilliams.com/?p=1908).
The sad fate of its main character, a human mongrel named Sam, could become reality sooner than we think, if Americans allow Citizens United to stand.
Thanks for mentioning this, CQ; I’ll see if I can get a review copy of Animals sent to McWilliams.
Incidentally, although the afterword to the novel focuses on making the case against the cruelties of factory farming (a tough-enough idea to sell, sad to say), I am now absolutely persuaded that vegan is the best way to go. Writing Animals helped to persuade me of that. All the best
Don
I’m so glad that writing about sweet little Sam had that effect on you, Don.
Though I didn’t say so, I was wondering why the end focused only on factory farms and not “happy meat.”
In the book’s climactic scene, I felt like grabbing Naomi’s hand and running in to that horrible place to rescue Sammy. I still feel that urge. The image will haunt me forever. I think it is his uncomplaining, meek and inoffensive manner that touches my heart so. He is the model of innocence.
I would think, since you are in favor of granting rights to non-human entities, that you would support Citizens United as a step in that direction. After all, it grants (or acknowledges) the First Amendment rights of non-humans, such as for-profit corporations, labor unions, and non-profit corporations such as universities and charities.
That said, despite the oratorical excesses of hortatory leftists, these actually aren’t non-human entities: they are collections of humans, organized to act with a single voice. The fact that they have organized themselves as a group does not deprive the individuals who make up that group of their First Amendment rights. The legal fiction is simply the treatment of the group as a single union, just as marriage or civil union is a legal fiction that recognizes two individuals as a single union.
I think the same thing all the time about these so-called “personhood amendments” popping up in red states. At least they’re trying to give rights to biological matter, I suppose. Still, not quite sure how the fertilized egg > pig/chicken/cow equation adds up to anything other than willful ignorance and speciesist chauvinism.
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