http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-205.pdf
It is really quite good. It is long, but then Stevens must argue two strong claims.
Claim 1b) The expansion of the rights of corporate "persons" here does not really follow from existing law. Nor does it have any real basis in American history--should you be the type who considers that sort of thing relevant, I suppose.
This seems to be the kind of argument that dissents normally make--it's why they're there, right?--if maybe not normally so strongly. And it is the kind of thing that seems to coincide with the form the core of the arguments on this thread (with maybe the Carrol Cox-SA emphases an exception). To which I must again recommend a reading of Stevens, for at least a jumping-off point. Being a Supreme Court Justice and everything, with I presume some sharp and well-trained clerks working for him, Stevens really does provide much of the legal and historical basis on which corporate personhood stands, with arguments that (I would almost add: thereby) are, overall, objectively more radical than have appeared here.
But my label 1b) above is not really Stevens's major point. Which would be:
1) The majority opinion is an assault on elections, the constitution, and the rule of law.
You won't find that exact phrase, of course--he is a Supreme Court Justice, after all--but his dissent includes passages like:
"Essentially, five Justices were unhappy with the limited nature of the case before us, so they changed the case to give themselves an opportunity to change the law."
and
"The Court’s ruling threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions across the Nation."
And he says more, and at length. Again, best to read it.
I'm a layperson and haven't read Supreme Court decisions for a living, but I've read a few, and I'll go out on a limb and say that this kind of claim, even in a dissent, is... not usual.
This overarching question--it is really one about constitutional legitimacy--seems to be Stevens's main point; he foregrounds it. As he should.
Stevens's dissent must have been disturbing, since Scalia attacks it at length. And there, Scalia helpfully makes explicit the class basis of the majority opinion:
"...to exclude or impede corporate speech is to muzzle the principal agents of the modern free economy."
Quite so. And this follows directly:
" We [sic] should celebrate rather than condemn the addition of this speech to the public debate."
Mission accomplished.
FWIW, Scalia here makes precisely the sort of argument that Stevens insists was irrelevant to the case, making Scalia's response a sort of legal-opinion equivalent of this:
http://www.ibzp.net/archive/2006/files/page0_blog_entry366_1.jpg
(Note: Based on the way these opinions are ordered when published, Scalia's response to Stevens follows the majority opinion, so it appears *before* the Stevens dissent, around the middle of the .pdf.)
On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 9:04 AM, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
On Jan 27, 2010, at 1:52 PM, SA wrote:
Why is an unincorporated business better than a corporation?
Because it's small and cute rather than big and ugly. ___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
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