“Corporate Criminals” and Other Oxymorons in a Fraying Democracy

• In Event: The Role of Public Discourse in Democratic Retrenchment and Reinvigoration

Abstract

This project examines public dialogue regarding Harrington vs. Purdue Pharma to consider how citizens experience the anti-democratic practices of US political institutions. By analyzing national as well as local news coverage in the Appalachian region, one of the regions most affected by the opioid crisis and the potential settlement, I consider the educative role this case plays in citizens’ perceptions of their value in the eyes of government, and the (un)justness of the US legal system. Harrington is a powerful example because it bears on one of the most widely-felt public health crises in a century, and its ruling will have substantial material impacts on state, local, and tribal governments. Harrington, currently before the Court, will rule on the constitutionality of Purdue Pharma’s (the maker of OxyContin) multi-billion-dollar bankruptcy settlement, which protects the primary owners of the company, the Sackler family, from civil liability in future opioid-related claims. This case is a vivid demonstration of the dual “justice” system in the US, especially as it relates to drug policy, with mass incarceration for the poor, black-and-brown-racialized, and marginalized, in contrast to slap-on-the-wrist “settlements” for the wealthy, white-racialized, and privileged. Whatever the Court decides, I argue that the case’s premise allowing the Sacklers to avoid criminal punishment has a powerful educative effect on citizens’ perceptions of the judicial system’s ability to hold powerful actors to account. In the buried bodies of loved ones and the decimation of families and communities, Harrington makes visceral how corporate impunity and racialized injustice are woven into the fabric of U.S. government, further undermining public confidence in political institutions and citizens’ sense of political efficacy and equality.

Author

• Be Stone, Rhodes College