Elections and access to information are two of the most fundamental aspects of a functioning democracy fostered by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. However, as elections are increasingly won by the candidate with the most money and as our news sources continue to be consolidated among just a few corporations driven by their quarterly earnings, the health of American democracy seems increasingly fragile at a time in our nation's history - indeed our world's history - when it most needs to work on behalf of its citizens. Now more than ever, the role that corporations play in our democracy requires broad education and rigorous debate.
The Center on Corporations, Law & Society (CCLS) was formed in 2003 in recognition of the fact that many of the most pressing public policy matters facing law and society today have corporate behavior, structure or accountability issues at their core. Seemingly disparate issues - from the Enron and WorldCom financial scandals that hurt consumers, workers and investors; to efforts to ensure safe food, living wages and healthy working conditions in the process of expanding global trade; to access to affordable healthcare and medicine; to the industrial processes that contribute to global warming; to the role of private defense contractors benefiting from the "War on Terror"- all in fact share a common actor: the large, public corporation.
CCLS seeks to promote scholarship and dialogue on the role law plays in maximizing the positive contributions of corporations while also protecting fundamental public interest values. To this end, we think it is critical to understand the role corporate law and structure plays in many instances of social and economic injustice.
Creative solutions that prevent injustice while supporting business enterprise must first start with understanding corporate law and structure as well as the issues that may be the result of corporate behavior or misbehavior. CCLS in its past three years has used this framework to host numerous speakers, conferences and symposia that bring together experts across disciplines and across professional sectors to explore some of the complex issues involving the interplay between corporation, law and society.
Most recently, CCLS, along with noted First Amendment scholar Professor David Skover (author with Ron Collins of The Death of Discourse and The Trials of Lenny Bruce), tackled in this election year the timely issue of corporate influence in the political process and our access to accurate information in an October 20 conference: Corporations & the First Amendment: Examining the Health of Democracy. The conference brought together nationally recognized scholars, attorneys, policymakers and activists from across the country to examine how corporate law and structure, combined with First Amendment jurisprudence, influence an active democracy.
Professor Adam Winkler of the UCLA School of Law offered an historical overview of the evolution of corporations and corporate law, the development of the "corporate personhood" doctrine and how the First Amendment has afforded commercial and political speech protections to corporations. The conference followed with a discussion on "Should Corporations Have First Amendment Rights?" between Professor Daniel Greenwood of the University of Utah College of Law and Erik Jaffe, a private practitioner active with the Federalist Society and contributing blogger to The Volokh Conspiracy.
Other panels included: "Corpora-tions & Commercial Speech" (featuring David Vladeck, professor of law at Georgetown and former director of the Public Citizen Litigation Group, and Mark Lopez, senior staff counsel with the head office of the American Civil Liberties Union); "Corporations & Political Speech: Should Speech Equal Money?" (featuring Professor Martin Redish, noted constitutional law scholar at Northwestern School of Law; Scott Thomas, former chairman of the Federal Election Commission; and Lisa Danetz, staff attorney with the National Voting Rights Institute); and "The Corporatiza-tion of Communication" (with Law-rence Soley, professor of communication and journalism at Marquette Univer-sity and author of Censorship, Inc.; Professor Adam Candeub, former attorney-advisor to the Federal Communica-tions Commission; and Jeffrey Chester, director of the Center for Digital Democracy).
The conference concluded by moving from theory to practice with a session on "Protecting the Polity: Strategies for Reform," which featured panelists sharing a wide range of ideas for reducing corporate influence in the political process. Charlie Cray of the Center for Corporate Policy discussed recent legislation passed by citizen initiative in California's Humboldt County to grant political and civil rights only to natural persons and to prohibit non-local corporations from contributing money in county elections. Solange Bitol-Hansen, national programs director for Public Campaign, outlined successful state-based initiatives to legislate "clean elections" that support candidates running for office with only small, citizen donations free of corporate campaign contributions. Finally, Bruce Freed, co-director of the Center for Political Accountability, described efforts to work within the corporate structure to compel corporations to disclose their campaign contributions because they compromise shareholder value.
The conference closed with a keynote address by Mark Crispin Miller, professor of culture and communication at NYU Steinhardt School of Education, but perhaps best known for his frequent radio, magazine and newspaper appearances and his multiple books, including Boxed In: The Culture of TV and, most recently, Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 Election and Why They'll Steal the Next One Too (Unless We Stop Them).
A one-day conference certainly cannot solve the problem of fostering a vibrant democracy in light of tremendous corporate influence in the political process and media content and delivery. However, bringing together experts across disciplines and sectors with an engaged audience to examine these fundamental questions in a new way may indeed be the first step toward assessing the health of our civil society and developing effective strategies to protect it. n
The conference proceedings will be published in a forthcoming symposium issue of the Seattle University Law Review. For more information about the conference or the Center on Corporations, Law & Society, visit www.law.seattleu.edu/ccls or contact Dana Gold at goldd@seattleu.edu.
