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How We Can Revoke Corporate Personhood

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FreakinDJ Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-22-10 01:59 PM
Original message
How We Can Revoke Corporate Personhood
How We Can Revoke Corporate Personhood

Corporate personhood and corporate constitutional rights are a lie. How do we get the courts and government to realize that?

The simple solution would be to somehow bring a case involving only corporate personhood to the Supreme Court and ask them to rule on it. Hopefully they would take a strict-constructionist line and recognize that the Constitution does not mean corporations when it says persons. This method is unlikely for a variety of reasons, the foremost being that the current Supreme Court is a product of the corporate-dominated legal system and appointees are designated by corporate-dominated presidents and approved by a corporate-dominated Congress. In addition, many roadblocks have been built into the system to prevent such a case from even coming to the Supreme Court. We would need a law in some State or locality specifically denying corporations personhood, but attorneys and judges have so far taken the view that any such law would be outside the allowable bounds for local jurisdictions. They can (and certainly will) advise elected officials that they cannot even allow such a law to come up for a vote or referendum.

But neither did the railroad attorneys simply declare corporations persons and a few days later have the Supreme Court agree with them. Powerful as they were, it took them 15 years to get corporate personhood enshrined in the system.

We will need a sustained grassroots campaign to abolish corporate personhood. This campaign has barely begun. We can win with education and action. We must try to pass laws abolishing corporate personhood in every local government and in every state. We must argue before the courts so that they become familiar with our ideas. We must pass referenda and then protest when our referenda are struck down by the corrupt judiciary. We must demand that elected representatives take a stand against corporate personhood if they want the votes of environmentalists, workers, and small business owners. And we must argue our points in the law schools where future generations of lawyers and judges are being trained.

Supreme Courts do not work in a vacuum. When the public cries out for an issue to be tried the Supreme Court loses its prestige, perhaps even its ability to govern the country, if it refuses to hear the issue. Even if, in the first case, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of corporate personhood, if they at least gave an actual rational to their madness, we would be able to tear it apart. We could focus on each point of their argument and bring suits appropriate to overruling each point

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MercutioATC Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-22-10 02:06 PM
Response to Original message
1. Now THIS is the right question!
...because corporate personhood is the actual issue, not the recent SCOTUS decision.

It seems to me that it would involve a new interpretation of the 14th Amendment as it applies to "personhood".
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no_hypocrisy Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-22-10 02:11 PM
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2. All good points.
Other than amend the Constitution, you change a USSC decision by making it overrule its prior decision. And you start at the grassroots: local court and ordinances, to the county, then to the state, and then to federal court.
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horseshoecrab Donating Member (613 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-22-10 02:13 PM
Response to Original message
3. k&r and thanks
FreakinDJ -- thanks for posting this. Got our work cut out for us for sure...

horseshoecrab
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FreakinDJ Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-22-10 02:26 PM
Response to Reply #3
4. It's like they stole my soul
It's like they stole my soul when they made that ruling

The Court basically said I am the same as some intangible shield crooks and liars hide behind.

I'm a person, I'm Flesh and Blood, I am as Good as my Word, and as my Deeds, and now the court wants to say I am one in the same as shield used to hide behind to avoid prosecution for graft and corruption, or as a means to avoid repaying my creditors

It just feels like they stole my sole
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T Wolf Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-22-10 02:57 PM
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5. By revoking the persons in control of these new "people." By any means necessary. nt
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