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 ...
Individuals who represent corporations have 1st amendment rights.
Sotomayor is nuts.
So, dogs never got a chance to find out if you were palatable?
When you speak here, is it as a lawyer or as a concerned citizen?
“I’m ready to be flamed”
Burn in hell!!!!
But the question of whether groups have rights is a Fourteenth Amendment problem and is really irrelevant to a discussion of the First.
The 14th was written for individuals but decades of liberal jurists have read group rights into it, giving us the affirmative action, the ADA, etc. All the mischief done to the Constitution with group rights is a 14th Amendment problem.
But the First Amendment is different. The First is absolute and irreducible. Speech is speech is speech. Any restrictions at all on it, barring felonies like threats of violence, is destructive to it.
What about its mercurial partisan reverberations — is it merely a victim of political pressures?
Okay the problem I see with this argument is that its definitely creating a class distinction of groups, collections of individuals and collective interests.
If a corporation, for profit and not for profit, is going to be given less legal standing than an individual how are unincorporated groups and interests going to be treated?
This is the problem I see. If you’re going to start marginalizing groups based on their legal establishment some groups will definitely be more equal than others.
“progressives” is code-speak for “Communists”. Good to know this racist Soto is ready to redefine the corporate citizen as having no rights anymore. Just like she plans to do away with the rights of The People.
It is time for the Counter-Coup.
I’ll be reading through them all. People have no idea that the 14th is the root of all evil. Verily, verily! LOL
It will probably have some echos in the future. I know not what. Maybe this. Please view in order.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xes0F36eTJA&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_DEtfvv9MU
parsy, who knows it is a non sequitar but I just found these and have been ROTFLMAO
I think the rule should be that if you pay taxes or are governed by laws, you get a say. Corporation or not. Dems think corporate profits are bad, but obscene profits for the entertainment industry and lawyers are fine.
Won't work...The Corporation I was for does not represent me...It does NOT have my best interests at heart...
It doesn't have to be "more than that" - the "separation of capital responsibility from personal responsibility" is the root of virtually all corruption.
This is also an obvious, common sense, easily understood concept ~ which is ancient!
How wise, that Latina!
Corporations are made up of many different types of people, and therefore different political ideas..should they act politically as though they were of one mind? How about unions? There are many conservative minded union employees, yet their dues go to liberal ideas and causes as though they were of one mind. Interesting questions imo. And how about industry lobbyists, could these questions extend to their actions?
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Doesn't say corps of course but doesn't say people either.
Good sign for Sotomayor I think.
“I must say that what she says makes some sense. I’m ready to be flamed, but if we are going to be consistent originalsts,”
Good logic, IMHO, the Constitution says “We the People” and “the right of the people” not we the corporate people. The Constitution does not give one group multiple voices where the average person has but one.
They can hire a good looking blond lobbyist like the rest of us to sleep with our Senators and gain influence.
It is one of the reasons that I say that we are now an Oligarchy.
That will be next. Ginsberg is in poor health and Stevens is 89. Both likely will be replaced by 0bama.
The context of her comment was a campaign-finance case. She was arguing that corporations don't don't have first amendment rights. What she seems to be getting at is that she would limit the free speech of individuals who would represent corporations.
Good sign for Sotomayor I think.
Limiting first amendment rights is not a good thing.
It seems pretty straight-forward to me. If corporations are legal creations, created by the State, then can’t the State decide what rights corporations do or don’t have?
If a corporation was run by or, even more to the point, was a sentient and intelligent artificial intelligence (AI) then that corporation could be and perhaps should be a "person" just like a human individual.
A wealthy corporate AI should have the same rights, responsibilities, and restrictions as a similarly wealthy individual person.
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