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What the Senators forgot to ask. Interesting set of questions, below. KwC Open Letter To
Members Of The US Senate Judiciary Committee From: the Program on
Corporations, Law and Democracy (POCLAD) January 19, 2006 Dear US Senate Judiciary
Committee Members, The Program on Corporations, Law
and Democracy (POCLAD) calls on you to complete your questioning of US Supreme
Court nominee Samuel Alito. Judge
Alito's position on the larger issue of this nation's democracy, trampled by
the rights and powers of corporations to govern, was left untouched and
unexplored following last week's Senate confirmation hearings. The vast majority of non-criminal
cases to be brought before the nine robed ones of the Supreme Court in the next
few years will relate to matters of corporate "rights," protections,
and dominance and their impact on the rights of human beings in this so-called
democracy.
How strange, therefore, that among the many questions posed to nominee
Alito, not a single one addressed the doctrines of corporate autonomy and
authority that insulate these collections of capital and property from control
by the people and their legislatures -- which used to exist at one time in this
nation. Have the judiciary's efforts
been so successful over the last 200 years to find corporations within the US
Constitution and bestow constitutional "rights" upon them that
current lawmakers fail even to question this democratically illegitimate reality?
Indeed, for two centuries Supreme Court justices, the closest institution we
have to Kings and Queens, have been at the center of affirming and expanding
corporate rule and placing corporations well beyond the authority of the
people. We hope you do not concur with this history and its consequences. As the following questions were
not asked of Judge Alito during his Senate hearings, it is absolutely necessary
now to determine his response to them in writing. Only after Judge Alito
responds to these concerns and his answers are promptly made available to the
general public and to all U.S. Senators should voting on his confirmation
occur. The appointment for life of a
person who will assume a position of vast and seemingly ever growing power in
our society demands an exhaustive review of every issue area that he/she is
likely to address on the high court. Corporate constitutional rights and their
impact on our rights as self-governing human beings certainly qualifies as one
such issue area. This decision is of the utmost importance to the fate of the
country. Respectfully, Greg Coleridge
Karen Coulter Mike Ferner Ward Morehouse
Jim Price
Virginia Rasmussen Mary Zepernick For the Program on Corporations,
Law and Democracy Phone: 508-398-1145
[EMAIL PROTECTED] www.poclad.org Questions for
Judge Samuel Alito: First a bit of background. In a 1978 case, First National
Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, the Supreme Court decided, 5 to 4, that
business corporations - just as flesh and blood persons like you and me - have
a First Amendment right to spend their money to influence elections. Chief
Justice William H. Rehnquist dissented. "It might reasonably be
concluded," he wrote, "that those properties, so beneficial in the
economic sphere, pose special dangers in the political sphere." The late
Chief Justice went on to write: "Furthermore, it might be argued that
liberties of political _expression_ are not at all necessary to effectuate the purposes
for which States permit commercial corporations to exist." -- Do you believe that corporate
money in our elections poses "special dangers in the political
sphere"? --Do you believe "that
liberties of political _expression_" are necessary "to effectuate the
purposes for which States permit commercial corporations to exist"?" -- Do you believe that money is
speech? Or is it property? In 1886, only eighteen years after the people ratified the
Fourteenth Amendment, the Supreme Court had before it Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad.
The issue was whether the Amendment's guarantee of equal protection barred
California from taxing property owned by a corporation differently from
property owned by a human being. Chief Justice Morrison Waite disposed of it
with a bolt-from-the-blue pronouncement: "The Court does not wish to hear
argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to
the Constitution, which forbids a state to deny any person the equal protection
of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it
does." How would you characterize the Court's refusal to hear argument in
a momentous case before deciding it? -- Judge Alito, was the
"person" whose basic rights the framers and the people sought to
protect through the 14th amendment to the Constitution the newly freed slave? -- Was the "person" a
corporation? -- Is a corporation a person
"born or naturalized in the United States"? -- In proclaiming a paper entity
to be a person, Judge Alito, was the court faithful to the intent of the
framers of the Amendment and to the intent of the people who ratified it? - Judge Alito, how would you
characterize the court's refusal to hear argument in a momentous case before
deciding it? --Would you describe the court's
decision in Santa Clara County as conservative? As radical? As open-minded? --Would you agree that the Court
that decided Santa Clara in 1886 failed to meet the standard of judicial
conduct that was met by the Court in 1973, when it decided Roe v. Wade only
after being fully briefed, hearing oral argument, and deliberating at length? -- You have expressed profound
admiration for Judge Robert H. Bork, calling him “one of the outstanding
nominees of the 20th Century." As you know, he famously denounced Roe as
"a wholly unjustified usurpation of state legislative authority."
Without regard as to whether Roe was rightly or wrongly decided, was Santa
Clara "a wholly unjustified usurpation of state legislative
authority?" -- Again without regard as to whether Roe was rightly or
wrongly decided, how does it strike you that the Court has declared a
corporation -- a paper entity that is neither born nor naturalized -- to be a
person but has declared a fetus not to be a person? Note: The above questions were
drawn from an article prepared by Morton Mintz who covered the Supreme Court
for the Washington Post for four years and is a former chair of the Fund for
Investigative Journalism. POCLAD
researches corporate, legal and movement histories and works with activist
organizations to develop strategies that assert human rights over property
interests. |
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