Gangs of America: The Rise of Corporate Power and the Disabling of Democracy by Ted Nace

Author:Ted Nace
Language: eng
Format: mobi, pdf
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
Published: 2005-10-04T14:00:00+00:00

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♦ CHAPTER FOURTEEN ♦

Judicial Yoga

The tangled logic of corporate rights

WHAT LEGAL RATIONALES has the Supreme Court relied on to establish corporate rights? How well do those rationales stand up to an audit of their logical coherence?

At first glance, the Supreme Court’s development of corporate rights has the appearance of an orderly and careful progression. It begins with the foundation decision in the 1886 Santa Clara case declaring corporations to be entitled to the same “equal protection” as persons under the Fourteenth Amendment. Then, over the course of the following century, the Court examines first one case and then another, gradually expanding the set of corporate rights. (The entire corporate bill of rights is shown in Table 1.1.)

That image of coherence and care is deceptive. The judicial reasoning that underlies the creation of corporate rights has cracks—deep internal inconsistencies. Unfortunately, the process by which the Supreme Court builds a body of jurisprudence out of multiple decisions does not serve to expose these sorts of cracks, but rather to hide them. With the passage of time, the defective old bricks acquire a sheen of legitimacy, weathering into handsome, venerable foundations.

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