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Sotomayor Issues Challenge to a Century of Corporate Law
Wall Street Journal ^ | 17 Sep 2009 | Jess Bravin

Posted on 09/17/2009 2:09:37 PM PDT by Admiral_Zeon

WASHINGTON -- In her maiden Supreme Court appearance last week, Justice Sonia Sotomayor made a provocative comment that probed the foundations of corporate law.

During arguments in a campaign-finance case, the court's majority conservatives seemed persuaded that corporations have broad First Amendment rights and that recent precedents upholding limits on corporate political spending should be overruled.

But Justice Sotomayor suggested the majority might have it all wrong -- and that instead the court should reconsider the 19th century rulings that first afforded corporations the same rights flesh-and-blood people have.

Judges "created corporations as persons, gave birth to corporations as persons," she said. "There could be an argument made that that was the court's error to start with...[imbuing] a creature of state law with human characteristics."

After a confirmation process that revealed little of her legal philosophy, the remark offered an early hint of the direction Justice Sotomayor might want to take the court.

"Progressives who think that corporations already have an unduly large influence on policy in the United States have to feel reassured that this was one of [her] first questions," said Douglas Kendall, president of the liberal Constitutional Accountability Center.

(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...


TOPICS: Breaking News; Government; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: news; scotus; sotomayor; sotomayorwatch; unqualified; wallstreet
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To: TChris

Again, I’m not saying that her “intentions” are sound; what I am saying is that her reasoning on this issue might be.

Nothing prevents an individual employee/manager/officer/shareholder/director, or any group of them, from exercising any first amendment rights. But they are NOT the corporation. They simply aren’t. Period. The corporation is a state-created artificial person.


61 posted on 09/17/2009 2:48:44 PM PDT by dinoparty
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To: SandWMan

Of course I guess it doesn’t matter that these corporations are made up of individual people...who want to express their political opinions.

These people are already free to express their personal opinions with their personal money.


62 posted on 09/17/2009 2:48:51 PM PDT by freedomfiter2
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To: matt1234
Individuals have free speech rights but collections of individuals do not?

No I don't think she said that. She implies that corporations as corporate entities do not enjoy the same rights as individuals or groups of individuals. I don't necessarily disagree with her.

63 posted on 09/17/2009 2:49:32 PM PDT by Ben Mugged (Unions are the storm troopers of socialism.)
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To: dinoparty
I worked in the headquarters operation of an agency with 176 lawyers (most of the time). Virtually all of them were quite nice people.

My job was to defend/protect corporate (agency) interests ~ their job was to tell me what the law was on a wide variety of matters.

I did my job. They did their job.

As consequence when you walk into a post office you know what to do next and pretty much understand the process through implicit cues so that little overt rule citing is needed.

You will also note that there are no electric cattle prods guiding you down a chute toward an open window ~ that's the part attributable to the lawyers. All the rest of it is attributable to my kind of folk (non-lawyers) ~ and we could have used those prods.

64 posted on 09/17/2009 2:49:40 PM PDT by muawiyah
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To: AdmSmith; Berosus; bigheadfred; Convert from ECUSA; dervish; Ernest_at_the_Beach; Fred Nerks; ...
"Progressives who think that corporations already have an unduly large influence on policy in the United States have to feel reassured that this was one of [her] first questions," said Douglas Kendall, president of the liberal Constitutional Accountability Center.

65 posted on 09/17/2009 2:51:27 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/__Since Jan 3, 2004__Profile updated Monday, January 12, 2009)
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To: Admiral_Zeon
The 'wise latina' is already hard at work.

"Wise latinas." That must be, like, a mexican nickname for termites?

66 posted on 09/17/2009 2:51:35 PM PDT by hinckley buzzard (truth--the liberal's kryptonite.)
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To: Marty62
The Supreme Court did away with inheritance as the ONLY principle for passing on ownership after the death of the owner.

Hitler never ruled in the United States, and certainly did not do so in the late 1800s.

67 posted on 09/17/2009 2:52:03 PM PDT by muawiyah
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To: grey_whiskers

She will likely say the second amendment is expired or something stupid... /sarc


68 posted on 09/17/2009 2:52:45 PM PDT by GeronL (http://libertyfic.proboards.com ............. http://tyrannysentinel.blogspot.com)
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To: muawiyah

But if the lawyer had not prevented you from using the prods, then the agency could have been sued or prosecuted. Therefore, by informing you of the law, the lawyers were protecting the agency.

(leaving out the sovereign immunity aspect, of course)


69 posted on 09/17/2009 2:53:49 PM PDT by dinoparty
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To: Admiral_Zeon
It's almost a given that she'll support Sunsteins’s idea (I think it was him) to grant individual legal rights to snakes, rats, and other demoncrat-like animals.
70 posted on 09/17/2009 2:53:54 PM PDT by SuperLuminal (Where is another agitator for republicanism like Sam Adams when we need him?)
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To: dinoparty
If you go down that route you end up denying corporations the right to exist. If they have no right to speech, then why should they have the right to enter into contracts, borrow money, own property, or do anything else that an individual person is empowered to do?
71 posted on 09/17/2009 2:54:12 PM PDT by hinckley buzzard (truth--the liberal's kryptonite.)
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To: dinoparty
Nothing prevents an individual employee/manager/officer/shareholder/director, or any group of them, from exercising any first amendment rights. But they are NOT the corporation. They simply aren’t. Period. The corporation is a state-created artificial person.

If that's the rationale, then it should be applied to ALL organizations equally, not just corporations.

Individuals may make donations by name, but no other organization. Unions? Out! PACs? Out! 503c's? Out! No contributions unless it's from a single individual.

72 posted on 09/17/2009 2:54:47 PM PDT by TChris (There is no freedom without the possibility of failure.)
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To: dinoparty
Still, the question was quite complex. To start with the agency had "sovereign immunity" so no one could have sued us over the use of "cattle prods" to herd customers toward open windows.

Lawyers, in effect, called upon precedent and hoary principles of ancient laws to guide us to the correct answer ~ which given our druthers, we'd have rejected as not having "real teeth" in it!

73 posted on 09/17/2009 2:55:40 PM PDT by muawiyah
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To: muawiyah

Bigotry driven by fundamentalist collectivist dogma. Might as well have appointed a Taliban mullah to the court.


74 posted on 09/17/2009 2:55:50 PM PDT by Free Vulcan (Resident Obama: Not a President, not a Citizen, living here but from somewhere else...)
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To: hinckley buzzard

You are referring to Constitutional Rights. They may not have them, indeed. However, it is very easy to give them statutory rights that are equivelant to an individual’s Constitutional Rights — which all states have done through the legislative process.


75 posted on 09/17/2009 2:56:19 PM PDT by dinoparty
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To: freedomfiter2

Any way you look at it, it’s an abridgement of free speech. Ain’t no good going to come of it.

ex animo
davidfarrar


76 posted on 09/17/2009 2:56:23 PM PDT by DavidFarrar (davidfarrar)
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To: SuperLuminal
Not really. Sonja is the type of diabetic who needs to use Iguana spit, and you get that by cutting its throat and harvesting its salivary glands.

Or, maybe she'll side with Sunnysideup for everything but Iguanas.

77 posted on 09/17/2009 2:57:18 PM PDT by muawiyah
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To: TChris

I agree with you! 503c3’s for instance, ARE coporations!


78 posted on 09/17/2009 2:57:38 PM PDT by dinoparty
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To: Admiral_Zeon

Does this mean the NEA will be dismantelled, outlawed ???


79 posted on 09/17/2009 2:58:53 PM PDT by Tennessee Nana
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To: Carry_Okie

That is the way I understood it, “corporations” were legal people based on a clerk’s insertion.

That said, the idea that an Entity has no inherent right to expose it’s views is unsustainable, be that Entity “Joe” who flips burgers or Exxon, who deals in energy the idea of curtailing speech is heinous to the Constitution’s mandate of a free market place of ideas.


80 posted on 09/17/2009 3:00:15 PM PDT by padre35 (You shall not ignore the laws of God, the Market, the Jungle, and Reciprocity Rm10.10)
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