Real History of 'Corporate Personhood': Meet The Man to Blame for Corps Having More Rights than You

[marmar]

Berrett-Koehler Publishers / By Jeffrey Clements

The Real History of 'Corporate Personhood': Meet the Man to Blame for Corporations Having More Rights Than You
The real history of today's excessive corporate power starts with a tobacco lawyer appointed to the Supreme Court.

December 6, 2011 |


The following is an excerpt of Jeffrey Clement's Corporations Are Not People: Why They Have More Rights Than You Do and What You Can Do About It.)


In 1971, Lewis Powell, a mild-mannered, courtly, and shrewd corporate lawyer in Richmond, Virginia, soon to be appointed to the United States Supreme Court, wrote a memorandum to his client, the United States Chamber of Commerce. He outlined a critique and a plan that changed America.

Lewis Powell, like the Citizens United dissenter Justice John Paul Stevens, was a decorated World War II veteran who returned to his hometown to build a most respected corporate law practice. By all accounts, Powell was a gentleman — reserved, polite, and gracious — and a distinguished lawyer and public servant. Commentators and law professors cite Powell’s “qualities of temperament and character” and his “modest” and “restrained” approach to judging. At his funeral in 1998, Sandra Day O’Connor, who had joined the Supreme Court in 1987, said, “For those who seek a model of human kindness, decency, exemplary behavior, and integrity, there will never be a better man.” Even the rare critic will cite Lewis Powell’s decency and kindness.

Much about these accounts must be true, but none tells the whole story of Lewis Powell. All of them, and even the principal Powell biography, omit the details of how he used his gifts to advance a radical corporate agenda. It is impossible to square this corporatist part of Powell’s life and legacy with any conclusion of “modest” or “restrained” judging.

Powell titled his 1971 memo to the Chamber of Commerce “Attack on American Free Enterprise System.” He explained, “No thoughtful person can question that the American economic system is under broad attack.” In response, corporations must organize and fund a drive to achieve political power through “united action.” Powell emphasized the need for a sustained, multiyear corporate campaign to use an “activist-minded Supreme Court” to shape “social, economic and political change” to the advantage of corporations. .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/story/153345/the_real_history_of_%27corporate_personhood%27%3A_meet_the_man_to_blame_for_corporations_having_more_rights_than_you/

[pnorman]

1. More here

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/08/25-9

[ewagner]

3. ...and just how is it?

That Powell's service on the Board of Phillip Morris as well as his letter advocating Judicial Activism were never brought up in his confirmation hearings? I remember those times and the atmosphere was pretty toxic even then.

I know the really confrontational battles over Supreme Court nominees reached a peak with the Bjork and Thomas hearings but I still cannot understand how Powell got a free ride.

[Fantastic Anarchist]

4. Another case of projection.

IIRC, there was a study that showed more liberal minded judges using restraint, while the more conservative minded used activism in their rulings (if someone can link to the study, I'd be most grateful).

So, when the right-wing screams "judicial activism," remember, they are really referring to their judges while making it seem liberal ones are doing the activism.

[Uncle Joe]

5. Watching Colbert last night it struck me this is the same MO the Republicans use in their

demonization of "Hollywood Liberals" a form of projected propaganda preemption, as Colbert stated the Republicans; have run far more Hollywood celebrities than the Democrats, Ronald Reagan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sonny Bono, the Gopher dude from "Love Boat."

Meanwhile the Democratic Party seems to have been cowed from tapping a potential strength as many Hollywood Stars are liberal minded or Democrats.

I believe the Republicans have purposely used the same strategy of projection as a means to divert attention from their own "transgressions" and/or to dampen Democratic aggressive strategy to do likewise whether it be in their choice of candidates or their consideration and deliberation of the judiciary.

[Fantastic Anarchist]

6. Exactly. It poisons the well. nt

[saras]

8. Woo hoo! Björk on the Supreme Court! Wait? Isn't she Icelandic? Damn, you had me going for a sec

Sorry. It was such a lovely image I couldn't resist. Imagine Björk dressing all nine of them.

And she couldn't POSSIBLY do worse as a justice.

[geckosfeet]

2. An "activist-minded Supreme Court" eh. How ironic.

[Moostache]

7. Sweet Christ on a stick already....this is a 40+-yr old argument

{"Powell titled his 1971 memo to the Chamber of Commerce “Attack on American Free Enterprise System.” He explained, “No thoughtful person can question that the American economic system is under broad attack.”"}

That quote about the "system" being "under attack" can be heard every fucking day on Fox and the rest of the cackling hyenas in the right wing. How goddamn long is this same old song going to play before people wake the fuck up? I want to see the Occupy Movement return to every single location that they have been forcibly removed from and I want to see them in greater numbers each time. The years and decades for half-measures and elections and hope are OVER. This "attack" never was and never will be about protecting any one outside of the very top of the pyramid. Its time to shift the foundation and topple the apex.

[MisterP]

9. this was the spark for the Backlash Coalition: AEI and Hoover against Nader

Iran-Contra against the War Powers Act and the Church Committee, consumerism against Rachel Carson, the DLC against JFK and MLK, laissez-faire against Fordism, Friedman against Allende--heck, even EO Wilson aginst Science for the People

they placed the snarling, grabby, asshole aspects of America at the crown, and they've only been cementing their power since: they had to undo the pro-poor, pro-minority, pro-democracy, pro-woman, pro-man, pro-peace, anti-genocide, egalitarian, environmental, compassionate changes of 1965-75. And boy, did they.

[Laelth]

10. k&r for the truth. n/t

-Laelth