smitty8, June 30 at 9:28 am,

The people who own stock in joint stock corporations already have individual rights, so the claim to rights by corporations grants extraterritorial rights to corporations as a collective http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraterritoriality, as a communal organization over and above individual rights of those who own joint stock in the corporation, and extraterritorial corporate rights as a communal corporate collective will, in fact, as history shows, displace and replace the individual rights that it usurps, and leave individual rights powerless to defend the individual interests of individual rights from the collective communal corporate extraterritorial rights of corporations claimed as a collective by corporations in addition to individual rights as joint stock holders in a corporation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraterritoriality

http://library.findlaw.com/international-law/extraterritorial-rights-and-jurisdiction/

The granting of individual rights to a corporation as a collective commune of joint stock holders is Corporate Communism!! 

What is the argument that justifies Corporate Communism for a collective of joint stockholders and decries Communism and its benefits for the individual??

Questions for Supreme Court Nominee Kagan

by Ralph Nader

(Page 1 of 2)

1. Do you believe that for-profit corporations should have First Amendment political speech rights identical to those of humans?

2. If no, apart from the right to vote, in what ways do you believe corporate First Amendment political speech rights should differ from those of humans?

3. Large corporations have a lot of money, and the ability to generate a lot of revenue. Yet very rich people also have a lot of money. For purposes of First Amendment analysis, what are the consequential differences, if any, between corporations and real, live people?

4. Do you believe that electoral spending by third parties can distort the political process even in the absence of quid pro quo corruption, such that restrictions on electoral spending should be upheld under the First Amendment? Does this apply also to electoral spending not coordinated with campaigns (independent expenditures)?

5. Can independent expenditures give rise to corruption, or the appearance of corruption, sufficiently serious so that restrictions on such spending may be upheld under the First Amendment?

6. Do you believe that a strict reading of the Constitution provides for the treatment of corporations as “persons” under the law for purposes of equal protection, freedom of speech or due process of law? And, if so, what in the Constitution’s text provides a basis for this belief?

7. Do you see a problem when corporations are treated as equal participants, with every right to use their First Amendment rights to dominate public policy debates such as those that occur in state and local referenda?

8. Do you believe limits on television station ownership abridge the free speech rights of corporate broadcasters?

9. What is your view of the First Amendment rights of the listeners being paramount to those of the broadcasters as articulated by the Court in Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC, 395 U. S. 367 (1969)?

10. In 1986, in Pacific Gas & Elec. Co. v. Public Util. Comm’n of Cal., 475 U. S. 1 (1986) the Supreme Court (5 to 3) struck down a state regulation as violating a utility company’s “right of conscience” under the First Amendment. What makes the case particularly unsettling is its disconnectedness to opinions past and future. As Justice Rehnquist observed in his lengthy dissenting opinion in the case, “the two constitutional liberties most closely analogous to the right to refrain from speaking - the Fifth Amendment right to remain silent and the constitutional right of privacy - have been denied to corporations based on their corporate status.” Do you think it makes sense to attribute a right of conscience to a commercial corporation?

11. Would any trade agreement, such as GATT, NAFTA, or CAFTA ever require Senate ratification as a treaty?

12. Does the President have complete discretion to determine whether an international trade or other agreement must be submitted to the Senate for two-thirds treaty approval? If not, what are the criteria that determine when an international agreement must be submitted to the Senate for two-thirds treaty approval?

13. Are there limits on Congress’ power to strip federal courts of jurisdiction over a particular issue? If so, what are such limits?

14. Do you believe victims of defective products that meet federal standards should be limited from recovering damages from the manufacturers of the defective products?

15. Do you believe Congress should federalize and pre-empt state products liability common law in any or all sectors?

16. Plaintiffs’ trial lawyers have been blamed by their corporate critics for all sorts of problems with the economy and legal profession. Do you believe that those representing injured persons in product liability and medical malpractice cases are harming America?

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/06/29-9

Questions for Supreme Court Nominee Kagan

by Ralph Nader

(Page 2 of 2)

17. So-called tort-reform is aimed at restricting the amount of non-economic damages, such as pain and suffering, a party can receive. Are you concerned that this interferes with the traditional role of juries and judges to find facts and mete out appropriate justice?

18. Do you believe the use of the government contractor defense should be limited in nonmilitary procurement? If so, how?

19. Some people say the Ninth Amendment can play no substantive role in protecting rights, that it’s merely a statement of principle or reminder of limited government. Do you agree?

20. A number of legal scholars argue that the 11th Amendment has been interpreted by the Court to shield states from liability for wrongdoing in a way that blatantly contravenes the original intention of the Amendment. Are you familiar with that scholarship and do you find it persuasive?

21. In what circumstances, if any, is it appropriate for a contractual arbitration clause to contract away substantive contract law, tort, or statutory rights? For instance, can an arbitration clause require arbitration of a worker’s Title VII rights and at the same time limit the worker’s compensatory damages to $200,000? Can that same clause require the loser to pay the winner’s attorney’s fees? Can that clause require that the parties to arbitration bear their own attorney’s fees?

22. Describe the presumption against preemption of state law. Does it apply in some or all instances where federal law is said to preempt state law?

23. Is the presumption against preemption of state law (by federal law) similar to the plain statement rule that demands that Congress speak with unmistakable clarity if it wishes to override the states’ sovereign immunity? If the presumption against preemption is not similar to the plain statement rule, explain how it is different?

24. How is the presumption against preemption applied in cases where federal regulatory law (regulating, for instance, drugs, boats, pesticides, motor vehicles, and the like) is said to preempt state tort law that provides monetary remedies to compensate for injuries caused by a product that the federal government regulates?

25. Do you believe Congress should pre-empt the state-law-based medical malpractice system?

26. What are your views on the “American rule” as opposed to the English rule under which the losing party in litigation generally pays the winner’s costs, including attorney’s fees?

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/06/29-9

Questions for Supreme Court Nominee Kagan

by Ralph Nader

(Page 3 of 3)

27. What has been your reaction or views on Congressional funding levels for federally funded legal services programs over the last two decades? Should government be responsible for funding representation for poor people in civil litigation where important property or liberty interests are at stake? Or should that be mainly or entirely a private function?

28. Some scholars and judges believe that “Originalism” is the only principled method of constitutional interpretation. Do you agree?

29. Do you believe that a declaration of war by Congress is Constitutionally required for the United States to engage in war?

30. Does a Congressional delegation of the war-making discretion to the President in the form of a war resolution meet the test of Article One, Section Eight of the Constitution?

31. Is there a need to amend our open government laws to make the President subject to them in whole or in part? Would such amendments be constitutional?

32. Do you believe arguments before the Supreme Court should be televised in the way C-SPAN televises Congressional deliberations?

33. From both a legal (constitutional) and practical perspective, what is your view of the trend in the federal judiciary toward releasing more of its opinions in “unpublished” form, i.e., where the relevant court accords no precedential effect to the decision for other cases?

34. Should federal judges attend seminars which are funded by private corporations (or by foundations that are funded by such corporations) that have matters of interest to the corporations before the courts?

35. Do you believe a government attorney, in a subordinate position, should be forced (under penalty of discharge) to work on a case or argue a position that he or she believes is illegal, unconstitutional or unethical? Or should government lawyers have a “right of conscience” like other professionals?

36. What kinds of participation in civic life may federal judges continue to be involved in once they assume their judicial positions?

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/06/29-9

Speaking of “their” Supreme Court, as gerard did, I heard a good one recently. We’ve all heard the conservative members of the Court say how much they’re AGAINST “result oriented” court decisions.

I would remind them that when questioned about the Bush v. Gore decision in 2001, one conservative justice whose vote was key to the ultimate decision said, “We’re just doing this (deciding the election) we’re not setting a precedent.  It won’t apply to anyone else.”

I would like that justice to define ‘result oriented’ decisions.

One major aspect is missing from this topic: To
allow corporations to act without limit in the
political arena as if they were individuals
ignores the fact that it forces all of the
shareholders and employees to be complicit in
those acts when many or most may well not agree.

Kagen…on the payroll of Golman/Sachs up until
the time she got her appointment from Obama.

  Why would the president even nominate someone
  to the Supreme Court with those credentials?

I have listened to Elena Kagan and I feel that Elena Kagan will be an all around asset to the Conservative led Supreme Court and hope that she gets confirmed, as she can think and doesn’t continually parrot that she will follow stare decisis as Alito and Roberts did.

Although as a Supreme Court Judge, Kagan may choose to follow stare decisis, but doesn’t totally rely upon stare decisis, as she is able to present her opinions as representative of herself, unlike both Alito and Roberts who totally relied on stare decisis, then after appointed didn’t follow stare decisis at all. 

I would much rather have my case heard before Elena Kagan, should I have a case to be heard, than either Alito or Roberts or any other Conservative Right-Wing Republican EXTREMIST judge.

Nine times out of ten, offenses and injustices committed against the “common” people never make it to the Supremes because the common people don’t have money to hire enough lawyers, and Public Defenders don’t have all that much clout.

Chances are the idea of a Supreme Court came about partly to avoid States using the threat of secession—or actually seceding every time their noses got out of joint over some Federal policy supposedly enacted for the good of the entire nation.  A curb on states’ rights, in other words (and we still hear rumblings of that from time to time to this day).

“Our” Supreme Court would have the interests of ordinary people at heart and protect them from arbitrary forces like money and power.  Sorry to say, it’s “their” Supreme Court, and that’s why a Judge who “legislates from the bench” is considered to be a grave risk to established Conservative dominion, IMO.

Typical Democrats. They’ll make a lot of noise. Then they’ll all line up and vote for greater corporate power by putting Kagan on the court.

Lots of bluster and noise to hide the real action that they are taking that increases corporate power.

Remember the decision about corporate personhood and corporate political contributions. It was Kagan arguing in favor of this representing Obama before the court.

So, now the Democrats are going to put her on the court.  They know people won’t like this.  So they have to create a fake sideshow to distract people.

That’s all this is.  A lot of smoke and noise to hide the fact that the Democrats are screwing us all once again.

E.J.  asks

  “Whose Supreme Court Is It”

  not ours…

Alan Dershowitz, the ultra-pro-Israel fanatic, speaks of
Ms. Kagan’s years as Harvard Law School Dean as a “golden age”.

Well, no wonder he has such fond memories. During that time,
faculty member Dershowitz’s book entitled “The Case For Israel”
came under attack by scholar and harsh critic of Israel Norman
Finkelstein, who not only eviscerated the book on the merit of its arguments,
but also accused Dershowitz of obvious plagiarism, based on the fact that the
book makes many distinctive errors that are to found in identical form in the
unattributed sources of Dershowitz’s phony original research and analysis.

Amazingly, a Kagan-commissioned investigation concluded that there was no
plagiarism, but any honest assessment of the case leads inescapably to the
conclusion that Dershowitz did indeed plagiarize. Kagan’s ridiculous excuse for
an investigation officially absolved an odious Zionist racist of his obvious
wrongdoing, and it ruined the career of a brilliant, courageous, and scholarly
debunker of Zionist pieties.

We can be sure that Kagan and Dershowitz considered this a great victory for
Israel’s “security”.

Read all about it here:

..The identical errors issue was consequently well known and central to the
plagiarism dispute when Kagan ordered an investigation in 2004.  But the
Kagan-commissioned investigation still concluded that no plagiarism had
occurred.  What happened?  Were there really no identical errors after all?

So what exactly did the Kagan-commissioned investigation look at?  Did it
address the identical errors issue?  (I put that question to the Harvard Law
School administration myself when Kagan was still dean, but they refused to
answer.)  If not, why not?  Did the investigation not even go so far as to read
Harvard’s own student paper, in which the identical errors point had been
raised?  And now that the truth has come out, does Kagan (or anyone else at
Harvard) have anything they’d like to say to Finkelstein, the innocent man
whose career was ruined?  To date, Kagan and Harvard have remained
resolutely silent….

http://counterpunch.org/menetrez06282010.html

Years ago I took a graduate class on the Warren Court.  I was amazed how flexible the Constitution is, how it can be interpreted in support of completely opposing views on the same issue. 

Madison ‘a card-carrying member of the American Conservative Union?’ Tradition has it that shortly before the document was up for ratification, Madison, literally in the dead of night wrote the 9th Amendment because he realized that by some convoluted, screwy reasoning somebody someday would declare that Americans’ rights were limited to only those spelled out in the document.  The 9th Amendment precludes that possibility, or least makes it arguable.  Madison would be black-balled from any Conservative Union.

If only the future Court will recognize that besides a political democracy there is democratic capitalism and then judge accordingly, it will serve this republic of ours well.  (Our system of government wasn’t invented to make 1.8% of our population extremely rich while forgetting about the rest of us.)

In other words, the Democrats are going to stage a fake ‘dog-and-pony’ show to cover up their votes to put yet another vote for corporate power onto the court.

If the Democrats really believed this, then Kagan would not be the nominee.

Watch actions. Don’t pay attention to meaningless words.  The action in this case is putting another safe justice who will never oppose corporate power onto the court.

Everything’s a sea change to you E.J., but I think Mr. Harges got it right.

“Her vision of America as a gay-rights-friendly but militaristic Sparta,
where you have health care coverage, and you can have gay pride
parades, but you can also be pre-emptively thrown into jail because
Zionists consider you a “threat”, is an enlarged version of Israel itself. “

http://www.oftwominds.com/blogjun10/Eric-Andrews06-10.html

Kagan is bad on civil liberties, issues of war and peace, and
anything touching on belligerent US foreign policy in the
Middle East. She supports all sorts of authoritarian abuses of
power in the name of “fighting terror” and supporting Israel.

Her vision of America as a gay-rights-friendly but militaristic Sparta,
where you have health care coverage, and you can have gay pride
parades, but you can also be pre-emptively thrown into jail because
Zionists consider you a “threat”, is an enlarged version of Israel itself.

EJ Writes: “...she’ll be approved easily, and should be…” and “...she can’t be asked to be any more forthcoming about her views than were Chief Justice John Roberts or Justice Samuel Alito…”

Eric Licthblau (NYTimes) writes: “...When Elena Kagan went before the Senate Judiciary Committee in February as President Obama’s nominee for solicitor general, Republicans were almost as effusive as the Democrats in their praise for her.

There was no daylight between Ms. Kagan, who was the dean of Harvard Law School, and Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, as he led her through a six-minute colloquy about the president’s broad authority to detain enemy combatants. . . . Indeed, there was so much adulation in the air from Republicans that one Democrat, Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, joked at the hearing that she understood how Ms. Kagan “managed to get a standing ovation” from the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group…”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/17/us/17kagan.html

Glenn Greenwald writes: “...Why is it seemingly impossible to find even a single utterance from her during the last decade regarding the radical theories of executive power the Bush administration invoked to commit grave crimes and other abuses?  It’s possible that she said something at some point, but many hours of research (and public inquiries) have revealed nothing—other than when she endorsed the core Bush template during her Solicitor General confirmation hearing…”

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/04/13/kagan

It’s not surprising that Regurgitated Regular® Dionne would support Kagan. After deluding himself about the Health Insurance Ripoff and Enslavement act, anything is possible I suppose. Anything but embracing what once were real Democratic values.

So yeah, if you support the theory of the “unitary executive” (What we serfs used to call Kings) and endless wars and empire, Kagan sounds like a super choice.

Currently? The far right of America’s fascist elite - that’s whose it is. How else could corporations become people? It’s like another version of ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’ with corporations lurching down the streets, sucking money out of ATMs and saying ‘I’m not a corporation, I’m a man.’ If Kagan was really a liberal do you imagine in your wildest dreams she would be getting put on the Supreme Court? People like that don’t get on the Supreme Court now, if they ever did. Which I doubt. It’s hard to imagine she could make things worse - but I’ve been surprised before when I thought things like that.