The mechanism, in one minute
Standing = legal recognition × the capacity to enforce it. Citizens United left the recognition and crushed the capacity.
Citizens United rests on a category error that Roman law named two thousand years ago: the difference between persona — the legal mask the law grants so that rights can attach to someone — and res, the thing owned. A corporation is a res that has been handed a persona. Personhood in a constitutional order is not an unlimited resource; it is a boundary that defines who counts. Granting it to capital was therefore not an addition but a transfer — every right a corporation acquired as a “person” diluted the standing of the natural persons the Bill of Rights was written for. That is weaponized personhood, and it is also how the decision falls: not by amendment, but by litigation that puts the category error itself before the Court and shows corporate personhood operating as a zero-sum taking from citizens. The argument is set out in the materials below.
Read the argument
- Weaponized Personhood: Citizens United and the Category Error — the pillar page.
- How to Save Democracy: The Case for Overturning Citizens United on First Principles — essay.
- What Is Corporate Personhood — And Why Citizens United Broke American Democracy — essay.
- Weaponized Personhood: A Roman Law Framework for Defeating Citizens United — white paper (PDF).
- Executive Summary — Weaponized Personhood (PDF).
- One-Page Litigation Memo (PDF).