Real People v. Corporate “People”: The Fight Is On

[unhappycamper]

Allen Michaan, owner of the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland, Calif., routinely exercises his free speech, in this case by sharing his reaction to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision. The well-known marquee faces the MacArthur Freeway (I-580).


Real People v. Corporate “People”: The Fight Is On
by Doug Pibel
Published on Friday, June 4, 2010 by YES! Magazine

In 2009, Riki Ott was on the road for 252 days educating people about the dangers of "corporate personhood." That's the legal doctrine that says corporations have constitutional rights, just like human beings. She mostly spoke in academic settings, and there was some interest in the idea, says Ott, but not much.

All that changed on January 21, 2010, when the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Now interest has skyrocketed, and Ott finds people eager to volunteer, to organize, to meet, to do anything to reverse the Court's decision.

Supreme Court cases are usually interesting to lawyers, scholars, and those directly affected. Occasionally, a decision makes the news for a few days before disappearing from the public eye. But sometimes there's a game changer-a decision that is so clearly wrong that it becomes a rallying point. David Cobb, former Green Party presidential candidate and longtime activist on corporate personhood, points to Dred Scott v. Sandford as one such decision. Citizens United, Cobb says, is shaping up as another.

The two cases are mirror images of error. In 1857, the Dred Scott decision said that a flesh-and-blood human being had no constitutional rights because he was black. On January 21, 2010, the Court, in a 5-4 decision, used Citizens United to declare that corporations-legal entities with no human attributes-have the same constitutional free-speech rights that humans have.

Dred Scott was the most notorious Supreme Court decision of its time. It was not a groundbreaking case-it simply took existing law to its logical conclusion. But it so clearly violated both logic and human decency that it forced people to look at what slavery really meant. Rather than legitimizing the status quo, as it was intended to do, the decision galvanized the growing abolitionist movement, and set the stage for the end of slavery. But it took the 14th Amendment to overturn Dred Scott.



unhappycamper comment: So much for stare decisis, Roberts you putz.

[aquart]

1. Putz is a very bad word. Roberts, you are a putz.

[xchrom]

2. Recommend -- Roberts for Putz. Nt

[ixion]

3. Further, all 5 members of the SCOTUS who sold We, the People down the river

are ALL putzes of the highest order.

[baldguy]

4. Corporate "persons" vs flesh-and-blood persons.

The war didn't start Jan 21, 2010 - its been going on for 120 yrs.

And flesh-and-blood persons are losing.