Bear Flag Blog

Well, my opinion of spankin' new Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor just went dramatically higher.

During arguments in a campaign-finance case, the court's majority conservatives seemed persuaded that corporations have broad First Amendment rights and that recent precedents upholding limits on corporate political spending should be overruled.

But Justice Sotomayor suggested the majority might have it all wrong -- and that instead the court should reconsider the 19th century rulings that first afforded corporations the same rights flesh-and-blood people have.

Judges "created corporations as persons, gave birth to corporations as persons," she said. "There could be an argument made that that was the court's error to start with...[imbuing] a creature of state law with human characteristics."

Now that is 100% true and it's damned refreshing to hear it. The 19th century transformation, almost entirely through the judiciary, of corporations from temporary business amalgamations to immortal, amoral entities, has defined the world we live in and yet goes almost wholly unquestioned.

And we'd be a damned sight better off were it questioned quite rigorously.

It's a good article that quote is from, by the way, over at the Wall St. Journal. Check it out.