Professor Joo Writes on Constitutional Rights of Corporations for Columbia Law School Blog
Professor Thomas Joo published an entry on "Corporations, the Constitution, and the Rights of Others" on the CLS Blue Sky Blog, a Columbia Law School blog.
In the article, Joo examines the Supreme Court's protection of corporate political expenditures and finds that it is largely based upon treatment of "a corporation as no more, and no less, than an ‘aggregation' of human individuals whose rights are the real rights implicated in corporate constitutional questions." Such an approach "erroneously assumes that the corporation's acts are in effect the acts of those individuals," Joo writes, explaining that larger corporations concentrate power in the hands of professional managers who "enjoy nearly unreviewable discretion to control the resources of the corporation with negligible input from shareholders."
"The protection of corporate constituents may present a compelling state interest justifying the regulation of corporate speech," writes Joo. "Corporate political spending in particular could compromise the speech and property interests of corporate constituents who may disagree with the political message."
Joo, a professor at UC Davis School of Law, specializes in the areas of corporate governance and race and the law.