Declares Corporations Are People, Some Human Beings Are Not

[Joanne98]

Declares Corporations Are People, Some Human Beings Are Not


By Jeffrey Kaplan
Published February 8, 2008
http://www.opednews.com/maxwrite/linkframe.php?linkid=51986


In evaluating allegations that U.S. military forces deprived four British men of human rights during two years they were held captive in Guantanamo Bay prison, a U.S. appeals court found an innovative way to let the Bush administration off the hook. Two of three judges ruled the men -- because they are not U.S. citizens and, technically, were not imprisoned in the U.S. -- were not legally "persons" and, therefore, had no rights to violate.

While those judges were defying common sense and decency by denying legal personhood to living human beings, an appeals court in Boston has been reviewing an April 2007 decision by Federal Judge Paul Barbadoro that engaged in a different form of judicial activism -- granting human rights to corporations.

Barbadoro struck down a New Hampshire law that prevented pharmaceutical corporations from learning exactly what drugs doctors prescribe and how much they prescribe. The law aims to protect doctors and, indirectly, their patients, from drug companies pressuring doctors to choose their products.

The judge's grounds? He claims corporations, as legal persons, have "free speech rights" that would be infringed by such a measure.

The real issue in these cases (Maine recently passed a similar law) isn't free speech at all; it's manipulation and control. The drug salespeople only will decide what to say after poking into the doctors' prescription records. Under the guise of protecting speech, Judge Barbadoro denied both legitimate privacy rights of doctors and key protections to ensure patients are prescribed drugs based on their medical situation, not pressure applied to their physician.

Taken together, these two rulings are a perplexing and dangerous development. The founding principle of our country is right in the Declaration of Independence: all people are "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights." It is not for judges to decide who is and who is not a human being.

Nor should the courts play Creator by endowing legal constructs like corporations with human rights. Our constitutional rights exist to prevent large, powerful institutions -- whether governments, corporations, or other entities -- from oppressing us humans.

For too long a strange dichotomy has persisted between principled people on the political left and right wings. The left wing often warns against the growing power of business corporations. The right wing complains the left ignores the overweening power of the government and is "anti-business."

But many people on both sides have been seeing only part of the same elephant. What's happening is a merger of corporations and state.

Already there are corporate “black holes” for human rights that rival government affronts like Guantanamo. Under the Bush administration's legal framework for Iraq during its occupation, the Iraqi government wields no authority over Blackwater corporation's security guards.

And it's not clear the U.S. government does either. As a result, we may never see anyone punished for Blackwater's wanton killing of Iraqi civilians in Baghdad last September.

Then there's the case of Jamie Leigh Jones, an American employee of Halliburton/KBR in Iraq who claimed she was gang raped by co-workers in 2005. U.S. officials reportedly handed the evidence to KBR, whereupon the evidence apparently disappeared. Nobody in Congress, Democrat or Republican, has been able to persuade the Bush administration to reveal what it has done about the case since then.
http://www.opednews.com/maxwrite/linkframe.php?linkid=51986

[flashl]

1. K&R n/t

[Joe Chi Minh]

2. Show trial fears for 9/11 suspects

In an artice in Wednesday's Daily Mail, under the headline, "Show trial fears for 9/11 suspects", David Gardner reported:

Britain last night joined a growing international outcry over fears that America will turn the prosecution of six suspected plotters into a show trial. Foreign Secretary, David Milliband, said he "had some concerns" about the fairness of the of the US military courts that will try the Guantanamo inmtes.

He spoke out after United Nations anti-torture watch-dogs warned that the military tribunals risked breaching the basic standards of justice. Amnesty International also condemned the fact that the six suspects face the death penalty if convicted. Yesterday, a spokesman claimed Guantanamo was "an icon of lawlessness" and said the group planned to challenge the legality of the prosecutions."

There are already allegations of torture. A confession by Khalid Sheik Mohammed that he planned the attacks in their entirety has been compromised by the CIA's admission that it interrogated him using waterboarding.

There is much more, for example, on the BBC, the UN's special rapporteur on torture questioning why, with so much evidence, the Guantanamo Six should still be brought to trial before a military commission, which is lacking basic standards of a fair trial, and not a civilian court. It might become a show trial.

No link to the article available, unfortunately.

[AZ Criminal JD]

3. You are 120 years too late

The Supreme Court declared corporations persons in Santa Clara Co. v. Southern Pacific Railway (1886). Judge Barbadoro is just following long established law.

[Joanne98]

6. I know but we're still fighting back!!!!!!!

[Diclotican]

4. Joanne98

Joanne98

Wonder what would happend if AMERICAN SITICIEN had ben treated as less than humans, in a another country.. Like Iran China or Russland.. How would the media or the american public act, if they know that AMERICAN was jugded as less human than others..

I know the ansver, you to know the answer to that...

BUT US can do as they please??

Dam I am Pissed

Diclotican

Sorry my bad engelish, not my native language

[Joanne98]

5. I don't know what you're talking about!

:hi:

[Diclotican]

8. Joanne98

Joanne98

You don't;). US Will make a living hell for the people who have been doing that... I remember how the american media reacted when the 3p Orion Aries II was downed in Chinese airspace after a midair collision with a chinese jet in 2000. If the chinese authorities had INSISTED on putting charges against this american pilots, and keep the aircraft as evidence to after the case was over. Mr Bush the Administration and for the most part the american public would have boiled ower and threatens with almost everything from boycott to war... Even that it was some clearness if that it was the american who downed the chinese jet, not the opposite aroud as first claimed.. But that was a fact who was coming to light LONG after the pilots was home. The Aircraft send home and for the most part the public had forgotten the whole case...

And I know also who pissed off american military was when they was seeing that the chinese authority was peaking inside the aircraft too.. It was "Illegal" then.. But they may forgot to remember that american military authority under the most of the cold war was doing their best to se what was inside both chinese and russian aircraft..

Diclotican

Sorry my bad English, not my native language

[Karenina]

7. Two of three judges ruled the men

-- because they are not U.S. citizens and, technically, were not imprisoned in the U.S. -- were not legally "persons" and, therefore, had no rights to violate.

[creeksneakers2]

9. I suspect there were more words than "persons."

The judges might have found that the prisoners did not meet the definition of persons required by the 5th and 14th amendments. "All persons born or naturalized"...something like that?

I think somebody here is twisting words around to play tricks.

BTW: Corporations are persons. They are groups of persons.

[YankmeCrankme]

10. Corporations are persons??

Because they are made up of people? What faulty logic is that? I'm made up of cells, does that make me a cell? A rock is made up of atoms, does that make a rock an atom?

Of course not.

If what you say is true, then a person who owns his business as a sole proprietorship should get two votes. One for himself and one for his business since they are both persons.

Some of the worse logical arguments are made for trying to convince someone that a legal document or mental construct is a person and has all the same rights that a real person has.

[creeksneakers2]

13. Corporations aren't given the same rights as persons

However, would the corporation have any recourse if the government seizes its assets? Groups of people have rights. Just like MoveOn.org has a right to free speech.

You are made up of cells. If I put you in a freezer for a week will you die or will just your cells die? Is it OK if just all your cells are killed?

Read the cases. There are good reasons for the way things are.

Nobody is giving corporations the right to vote. They don't even have the right to make campaign donations. They are given the same rights that other groups of people have under our Constitution.

All extremists are the same. Right wingers believe the poor aren't entitled to any rights. Extreme left wingers believe the rich aren't entitled to any rights. Either way, its authoritarian bullshit.

[YankmeCrankme]

15. You really should stay with the program,

Yes, corporation have been given the same rights as people. Where have you been?

Corporations already have rights within the law, i.e. members of such an organization aren't personally liable financially to debts accrued by the corporation.

But, they don't or shouldn't have the right to free speech or any other right enumerated in the Constitution because they aren't people.

How the heck does the fact you can kill me even bear on this conversation?

What are you talking about? Where did the "rich" come into this? Your not even on the same page as the OP or my comments.

Well when you can marry a corporation or send one to prison or draft one to fight and die on the battlefield I'll agree that they are people, but until then...THEY AREN'T PEOPLE.

[Uncle Joe]

11. We've created corporate super citizens while turning ourselves in to serfs

Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, Joanne.

[happydreams]

12. Hmmm...howzaabout let's hold up on banning capital punishment...hee, hee..(continued)

for these "humans" until after the Socialist Revolution. :bounce:

[trthnd4jstc]

14. Corporations are not People

Only People have constitutional rights. I am president of a Corporation, and I have no issue with myself and my other Board member being held accountable. Yet, I am currently lower middle class, though I will never think like a Reptilian, and think that Corporations are people. Someone in congress please end this right for corporations, Now!

[AZ Criminal JD]

16. Corporations are considered persons by the courts whether you think so or not.

That has been the case for 120 years and no one in Congress is going to change that. It is the basis of all corporate law in this country (and every other). Corporations do have constitutional rights although not to the degree that people do. If corporations did not have rights they could not contract. When was the last time you signed a contract with a dog?