The U.S. Supreme Court

There were a couple items about the Supreme Court that caught my eye this week. The first is about corporate campaign-finance that came before the court this week and Justice Sonia Sotomayo views. The other case that I was interested in was the refusal of the court to hear any further appeals about the Catholic diocese of Bridgeport, Conn. FOI case.

The Wall Street Journal wrote…

Sotomayor Issues Challenge to a Century of Corporate Law
SEPTEMBER 17, 2009
By JESS BRAVIN

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."
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"A corporation is an artificial being, invisible, intangible," Chief Justice John Marshall wrote in an 1819 case. "It possesses only those properties which the charter of its creation confers upon it."
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But Justice Sotomayor may have found a like mind in Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. "A corporation, after all, is not endowed by its creator with inalienable rights," Justice Ginsburg said, evoking the Declaration of Independence.

If corporation are given free range on campaign finances, then the elections will be bought and paid for by them. We the people will have little or no access to government; it will be the corporate lobbyists with their pockets bulging with money will be the only ones to get our legislator’s ear.

In another Wall Street Journal article they write about the Supreme Court refusal to hear the Catholic diocese of Bridgeport appeal of the Connecticut Supreme Court order to open up the court records to the public.

Church Loses Fight Over Sealed Papers
October 6, 2009
By KEITH J. WINSTEIN

The U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for the release of thousands of pages of sealed documents concerning sexual abuse by priests in the Catholic diocese of Bridgeport, Conn.

The court's decision Monday effectively lifts a stay that has delayed the release of the documents since 2006, when four newspapers persuaded a Connecticut court to unseal them.

The Catholic diocese of Bridgeport decision to fight the original 2006 Waterbury Superior Court's ruling that the newspapers must be allowed access to the documents. The Boston Globe reported...

“...flew in the face of a pledge of openness in the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People released by the nation’s Catholic bishops in 2002 and conflicted with more recent statements by Pope Benedict XVI.”
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“This kind of desperate, hardball, self- serving legal maneuver not only contradicts what bishops have promised but what the pope has called for,’’ said David Clohessy, national director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP. “Frankly, it’s the same old same old.’’