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 ...
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.
Of course I guess it doesnt 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.
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.
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.
"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.
"Wise latinas." That must be, like, a mexican nickname for termites?
Hitler never ruled in the United States, and certainly did not do so in the late 1800s.
She will likely say the second amendment is expired or something stupid... /sarc
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)
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.
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!
Bigotry driven by fundamentalist collectivist dogma. Might as well have appointed a Taliban mullah to the court.
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.
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
Or, maybe she'll side with Sunnysideup for everything but Iguanas.
I agree with you! 503c3’s for instance, ARE coporations!
Does this mean the NEA will be dismantelled, outlawed ???
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.
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