Sotomayor Issues Challenge .......................

[Nonno]

"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."

""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.

"I don't want to draw too much from one comment," says Todd Gaziano, director of the Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the conservative Heritage Foundation. But it "doesn't give me a lot of confidence that she respects the corporate form and the type of rights that it should be afforded.""

More at source: Sotomayor Issues Challenge to a Century of Corporate Law - WSJ.com

[ylexot (Premo)]

I actually agree with her


...but the flipside of that is that if corporations do not have "rights", then they should not be taxed either.


...oh, and they should not be allowed to donate money to political campaigns either.


...and all of this should apply to any entity that cannot vote.

[FredFlash]

Originally Posted by Nonno

"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."

""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.

"I don't want to draw too much from one comment," says Todd Gaziano, director of the Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the conservative Heritage Foundation. But it "doesn't give me a lot of confidence that she respects the corporate form and the type of rights that it should be afforded.""

More at source: Sotomayor Issues Challenge to a Century of Corporate Law - WSJ.com

Corporate person-hood was established by conservative judicial activism and should be rolled back.

[Larry Gude (Premo)]

Originally Posted by ylexot

I actually agree with her


...but the flipside of that is that if corporations do not have "rights", then they should not be taxed either.


...oh, and they should not be allowed to donate money to political campaigns either.


...and all of this should apply to any entity that cannot vote.

This could get real interesting.

[chernmax (Premo)]

Whatever precedence comes of this should be interesting from a Union perspective...

[exnodak]

Her comment is a double edged sword.

I agree with her that the Court's have given corporations certain rights that should only be reserved to actual persons. They should have no standing in the halls of congress, but their stockholder citizens of the country should.

It is my understanding that the 19th Century courts only assigned the status of "person" upon corporations so that they could legally sue and be sued. But, the corporations have taken the mile from the inch given and extrapolated their standing to lobbying and asserting certain constitutional rights that were never intended to be afforded them.

Her statement is one of a constitutional libertarian with a liberal point of view. Its very interesting.

Too many question to make sense out of one comment.

[Pushrod]

Originally Posted by ylexot

I actually agree with her


...but the flipside of that is that if corporations do not have "rights", then they should not be taxed either.


...oh, and they should not be allowed to donate money to political campaigns either.


...and all of this should apply to any entity that cannot vote.

Good post. I concur!