Henninger notes that Justice Stevens cited a lengthy body of precedent according to which “corporations could be comprehensively regulated.” He then applauds Justice Scalia’s ridicule of Stevens’s “corporation-hating quotations.”  Henninger’s own gloss on Stevens: “Corporations themselves are anathema.”

Scalia, of course, could say anything he wanted to in his opinion; he had the votes to get his way. That doesn’t mean that his arguments hold up. It doesn’t follow that if someone holds that corporations should be susceptible to being regulated, he must hold corporations to be “anathema,” or harbors “hatred” for corporations. From the point of view of those who hold corporations to be liable to regulation, it would be silly to “hate” them, since the hatred would be directed at what is, in their view, a legal abstraction. It is, of course, possible to work up hatred, or at least anger, toward those who demand everything on their own terms, or unlimited prerogative.

Henninger: “This public-private tension is an ancient and never-ending debate in the U.S.” But nobody really knows how much of the “tension” will survive in the wake of this decision, which gives even more prerogative to entities that already were less restricted in this country than practically anywhere else in the world. Henninger and George Will want the rules of the game written on their own terms, so that their side always wins….

I’m afraid that Rudman may be out of luck when it comes to invoking the memory of Teddy Roosevelt.  George Will and Glenn Beck don’t think much of “TR.” Beck seems to think that he’s some kind of Communist — never mind that he’s on Mt. Rushmore….

The author, Thomas Mitchell, wants to defend the Supreme Court’s decision on the basis of natural law. He insists that the Constitution does not grant rights — it only acknowledges the rights conferred by nature and prohibits Congress from infringing upon them. That is fine as far as it goes, I suppose. Natural law is an honorable tradition. After all, a government appropriate for human beings should be based upon what human beings are — that is, their nature. I just don’t know whether Thomas Mitchell is competent to expound upon the implications of natural law.

Months ago, just after the Citizens United case was argued before the Supreme Court and Justice Sotomayor in her questioning raised the matter  of the legal status of the corporation, I monitored the comments posted on the Wall Street Journal letters page. Someone asserted: “The state creates neither corporations nor land.” The thought occurred to me at the time that this individual seemed to think that the creation of corporations head been described in the Book of Genesis, along with the creation of land, air, water, and the animals who would end up filing onto Noah’s Ark in pairs.  I should have mentioned at the time that, in my Bible, God rested on the seventh day — whereas apparently that was when He created corporations.

I don’t know what it will take to get it through people’s heads that there are no corporations in a state of nature. The point was well made by yet another correspondent to the Wall Street Journal letters page: “Corporations are created by state (and, rarely, federal) law, and none can exist except by government charter. As Chief Justice John Marshall wrote in 1804, a corporation ‘is a mere creature of the act to which it owes its existence.’… the more recent enactment of limited liability company laws should illustrate the point: Before these laws were enacted, there were no such organizations. But now there are.” Nor will it do to assert that a corporation is a mere “association of persons” and therefore obtains its libertarian rights from the rights of the persons so associated. A Fortune 500 corporation is not the same sort of entity as your Friday night poker game, which does not require a government charter — although the game may very well be busted by the police if the stakes are too high. A corporation wants certain things from the government. It wants its liability limited, and it wants agencies of the government to enforce the terms of contracts into which it may have entered. No such entity is found in a state of nature.

The Constitution does indeed prohibit Congress from infringing upon certain natural rights — but it is no stretch to suggest that those are the rights of living, breathing, natural human beings. (Thomas Mitchell doesn’t consider the dissent of Justice Stevens in the Citizens United case, in which, as I understand it, he insists it was always the Founders’ understanding that corporations were to be subject to regulation.) Mitchell expounds upon the philosophy of John Locke’s Second Treatise as though he were a college professor who had written a doctoral dissertation on the matter. He knows that, in a state of nature, people have to give something up to a government of some kind or they cannot survive.

Americans don’t want to concede anything to the state. Mitchell does no more than to expound a dime-store philosophy on the matter. But what is he going to do, if someone bigger and stronger proposes to violate his precious natural rights? Why shouldn’t I then say: No rights apart from the state?

People think they can get rid of the state, but it has been noticed that without such a thing, we don’t find much in the way of civilized human existence, or even beings that we would recognize as human — not much more than the existence of primitive hunter-gatherers or cave people, as a matter of fact. That’s why many thinkers have found the whole “state of nature” concept to be fit for ridicule, except perhaps as a thought experiment.

Rights need be understood in context. They have little or no meaning outside of a setting provided by a government or state apparatus. I am reminded of a statement made by a cranky, exasperated college professor: “What in the heck is a right? Has anybody ever seen one?”

Last week, just as news of the decision was breaking, he was applauding it as “gratifyingly radical.” The more radical the better, we may suppose. But in that case, why not permit direct corporate contributions to candidates? Or, why not strike down disclosure requirements, if you want a “gratifyingly radical” nullification of all restrictions? Justice Thomas, after all, said that  disclosure requirement should go, along with everything else. Just asking….

You’ll have a hard time finding a more apt and sardonic commentary on the matter than Robert Schlesinger’s “10 Questions About the Supreme Court Ruling on Campaign Finance” at the U. S. News site. Excerpts:

“Do corporations have an individual right to bear arms? I mean other than Blackwater.”

“Do corporations have a right to vote? If so, must they have been in operation for at least 18 years? If so, sorry Google.”

“Do corporations have the right to an abortion? (Is that what happened to Conan O’Brien’s TV show?)”

“Are corporations led by same-sex-CEOs allowed to merge? Or is that only legal in Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Iowa?”

Hilarious, or it least it would be if it weren’t so important….

At issue is the question whether a corporation ought to be afforded the same rights as a “natural” person. The “Law Journal” feature cites the views of Chief Justice John Marshall in an 1819 case: “A corporation is an artificial being, invisible, intangible…. It possesses only those properties which the charter of its creation confers upon it.”

The matter has come up in the context of the important campaign-finance case about which the Court recently entertained arguments. The “Law Journal” feature mentions the views of then-Associate Justice William Rehnquist in 1979 case that raised similar issues; Rehnquist speculated that the autonomy granted to corporations in the economic sphere “might … pose special dangers in the political sphere.” During last week’s hearings, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg chimed in: “A corporation, after all, is not endowed by its creator with inalienable rights.”

As a practical matter, it facilitated economic development over the past two centuries to afford corporations a considerable degree of autonomy.  Furthermore, corporations often are able to go “jurisdiction-shopping,” internationally or within the boundaries of a particular country, to set up operations in the setting that will afford them the most unrestricted prerogative. In my view, however, it is decisive that they cannot operate outside a framework provided by the legal and political system, and that they would collapse in the absence of government.

In my experience, when the issue of the legal status of the corporation is raised, libertarians tend to answer the criticism by belittling the matter — which, as far as I am concerned, largely clinches the argument….