Office by Alex Penny
Herein be random ruminations on politics, history, ideas, spirituality, religion, education, media, life, relationships, culture... and Boston sports when I really want to vent.
"If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention." (ubiquitous)
"Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has and never will." (Frederick Douglass)
"I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do, because I notice it always coincides with their own desires." (Susan B. Anthony)
"Clearly the trick in life is to die young as late as possible." (William Sloane Coffin)
Somehow “judicial activism” is associated with liberal judges, but conservatives were the ones who created ex nihilo a whole new life form, the corporate “fictional person” — and then gave these “persons” the freedom to impose their interests on real people like you and me. Pay attention to where the threats to democracy really come from.
We all know about the Supreme Court’s infamous Citizens United decision in which our conservative, five-member unelected majority defined corporations as “fictional persons” to exempt them from campaign finance restrictions, leaving them free to spend as much money as they want controlling our elections. People who believe in a functioning democracy can’t restrict corporate “persons” from buying elections because, strange as it seems, corporate money constitutes free speech.
But now there’s another case heading to the Court, Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum, which will really test how far this five-man majority wants to go in claiming corporations are “persons.”
The case involves Shell Oil’s conduct in the Ogoni region of Niger dating back to the 1990s. Shell’s extractive operations there were so exploitive that environmental and human rights protesters soon launched a campaign against Shell. Those protesters were tortured and murdered by the Nigerian government, allied more with Shell than its own citizens. In the Kiobel case, a dozen Nigerians claim that Shell’s parent company aided and abetted the Nigerian government in its campaign of murder and torture.
The case got to the Supreme Court because the Alien Tort Statute, written by the Founders in 1789, allows foreign nationals to sue in American courts “for a tort only, committed in violation of the laws of nations.”
So now our five-man conservative (“anti-judicial activist”) majority faces some interesting problems. For one, Scalia, Thomas et al say they are “originalists,” committed to interpreting the law as the Founders meant it. Awkward. The Founders wrote a law allowing this kind of case to proceed.
Even more vexing: will this Court really rule that corporations can buy elections because they are protected as “persons” under the law, but those same corporate “persons” cannot be held responsible for their criminal conduct?
Follow this case… Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum.
