A landmark ruling was handed down by the U. S. Supreme Court today:

Overturning a century-old restriction, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday that corporations may spend as much as they want to sway voters in federal elections.

In a landmark 5-4 decision, the court’s conservative bloc said corporations have the same right to free speech as individuals and, for that reason, the government may not stop corporations from spending to help their favored candidates.

And therein lies the problem — the danger, really — of this decision: “corporate personhood.” It’s this notion that corporations, because they have legal “personhood,” therefore have the same constitutional rights as living, breathing persons. Count me among those who think this idea of corporate personhood has gone too far.

I would encourage you to read Justice Stevens’ dissent to the ruling–I know it’s full of a bunch of legalese, but at least read the sections titled “Identity-Based Distinctions” and “Our First Amendment Tradition.” I’ll let you read his supporting documentation in his dissent, but here’s his conclusion:

The Framers thus took it as a given that corporations could be comprehensively regulated in the service of the public welfare. Unlike our colleagues, they had little trouble distinguishing corporations from human beings, and when they constitutionalized the right to free speech in the First Amendment, it was the free speech of individual Americans that they had in mind.

There’s already a movement afoot to amend the constitution to make it clear that the rights enumerated in the U.S. Constitution are for human beings, not soulless corporations.