> >No, it would not. The right to sue someone else is the right to hold
> >someone _else_ to _their_ contracts. The right to be sued is the
> >right to be held to your own contracts.
>
> No offense, but you're not making sense here. Being sued is something
> rather unpleasant; you are saying that a corporation (or an individual)
has
> the right to have something unpleasant done to them. By that definition,
> you could also say "I have the right to be robbed" or "I have the right to
> have my car stolen". Don't know about you, but I hardly consider that a
> right...
You're arguing the wrong point, Jeroen, and Gautam also used a bad turn of
phrase although he is correct.
Corporations do not have "the right" to be sued, but a corporation is a body
that is legally accountable, and may therefore be taken to court by any
individual/corporation/goverment that it has wronged.
>
> >So what? If the government is going to pass laws that harm
> >corporations and (more importantly) their stockholders for doing what
> >they had a legal right to do previously
>
> So the US once had laws that explicitly allowed American corporations to
> pollute the environment? I find that hard to believe.
Lack of a law prohibiting something is exactly the same thing, in practice,
as having a law allowing it.
There is no law saying that I cannot walk to work. I, however, choose to
drive, because there is also no law saying I must walk to work.
Charlie
