Mind-blowing...although the wanna-be will disagree, for fear their aspirations might have to shift...an excerpt: Orthodoxy has it the Supreme Court decided in 1886, in a case called Santa Clara County v. the Southern Pacific Railroad, that corporations were indeed legal persons. I express that view myself, in a recent book. So do many others. So do many law schools. We are all wrong. Mr. Hartmann undertook instead a conscientious search. He finally found the contemporary casebook, published in 1886, blew the dust away, and read Santa Clara County in the original, so to speak. Nowhere in the formal, written decision of the Court did he find corporate personhood mentioned. Not a word. The Supreme Court did NOT establish corporate personhood in Santa Clara County. In the casebook “headnote,” however, Mr. Hartmann read this statement: “The defendant Corporations are persons within the intent of the clause in section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment…which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” Here, anyway, corporate personhood was “provided”— in the headnote, instead of the formal written decision of the Supreme Court. But that’s not good enough. What is a “headnote?” It is the summary description of a court decision, written into the casebook by the court reporter. It is similar to an editor’s “abstract” in a scientific journal. Because they are not products of the court itself, however, headnotes carry no legal weight; they can establish no precedent in law. Corporate personhood, Mr. Hartmann discovered, is simply and unequivocally illegitimate. Read the full article here, and let's discuss... http://www.commondreams.org/views02/1226-04.htm
And this Court will simply affirm corporate personhood at the earliest opportunity, more than likely. Shame, really. I don't think the Rehnquist Court is likely to let this kind of technicality hang around, let alone overturn it into a sensible ruling.
We live in a plutocracy. What the rich want as law is law and that's that. The only positive here is that they're almost as distrustful of each other as they are united in class interest against the rest of us.
Counterbalance What organizational forces are likely to get behind this interpretive truth, and which would likely be most effective in supporting the re-examination / re-interpretation?
1. Let's say for the sake of argument this is accurate. It's been widely acknowledged for a very long time that this ruling was in error. It has only stood because of precedent. So on what basis would Rehnquist et al., simply re-state corporate personhood? 2. Even so, as a citizen, not as a Democrat, I would like to see the issue revisited. It will be a useful exercise for our nation to think about how corporations got to where they are today, and how antithetical their current status is to what the framers had in mind. Even a lost case will allow populist politicians a little more scope, IMO.
Judicial fiat. He'll start with the conclusion, then work his way backwards. This is REHNQUIST we're talking about.
It doesn't matter. Justice, like elections, is a commodity in this country. If you can afford it, you buy it. It would require a revolution of truly epic scale to re-align the forces that operate this country.
Despite what the militias and other gun nuts and a few die-hard pseudo-marxists claim, this would be futile in the age of biochem weapons, missiles and air superiority. If there were to be a successful Third American Revolution, the majority of the military would have to have joined it.
ehh...forget it. I'm not much of a fighter, anyway. That's why I joined the Air Force. And I believe you. I wouldn't want to go against a smart bomb with a bolt action rifle. The military isn't going to bite the hand that feeds it. The revolt would have to be so massive, that not even the might of the armed forces could stop it. I don't see that happening. Besides, my life doesn't suck. So I see no point in starting a fight with the government.
There's the true American spirit that makes me so proud. "My life doesn't suck - must mean everything's hunky-dory."
Definition and Expansion The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000. plutocracy SYLLABICATION: plu·toc·ra·cy PRONUNCIATION: pl-tkr-s NOUN: Inflected forms: pl. plu·toc·ra·cies 1. Government by the wealthy. 2. A wealthy class that controls a government. 3. A government or state in which the wealthy rule. ETYMOLOGY: Greek ploutokrati : ploutos, wealth; see pleu- in Appendix I + -krati, -cracy. OTHER FORMS: pluto·crat (plt-krt) —NOUN pluto·cratic, pluto·crati·cal —ADJECTIVE pluto·crati·cal·ly —ADVERB Not speaking for anyone other than myself, I can expand on the reality of plutocracy through one link, specifically... http://www.verdant.net/corp.htm