Supreme Court Lacks Quorum in Apartheid Appeal
WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday said too many justices have financial conflicts for the court to act in an appeal by 33 companies trying to stop a flurry of lawsuits brought against companies that did business in South Africa during the apartheid era.
Wait a minute. So many justices have ties to the companies in question that they can't hear the case, which means the lower court opinion has to be affirmed. In this case the lower court opinion was not in favor of the companies, but what if it had been?
Kind of an interesting problem for the highest court, isn't it? Maybe we shouldn't be putting such fat cats on the bench. Maybe this argues for selecting men and women who aren't quite so close to corporations.
Don't know how realistic a proposition that is, but geez, doesn't it seem like it should be possible to find brainiacs who aren't tied up with big business?
Edited to add a link to the story. Linda
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Of course it's possible
It's simply not desirable in the view of the President and the Congress.
Sadly, I think this is a truth that applies to both major parties (and Libertarians, too, since they genuflect before capitalist excess even more feverishly than Republicans do).
"The business of America is business" is nowhere to be seen in our founding documents, but it has become the essential guiding principle of our government.
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relocating from Indianapolis, IN to RTP, NC soon; got any advice for me?
I wouldn't recommend drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity for everyone, but they've always worked for me. -- Hunter S. Thompson
It's disturbing that they couldn't get a quorum.
It seems like they should have back-up for cases like this. On second thought, no, I don't want to re-write anything to do that. It doesn't look like this has happened many times in our history.
Be the change you wish to see in the world. --Gandhi
Pointing at Naked Emperors
I do not see what the problem is
By no means am I a wealthy individual, but through various stock holdings I currently have for my retirement, I would be forced to recuse myself as well.
The problem, jjsmith,
is that so many of the Supreme Court had to recuse themselves from hearing the case that they couldn't form a quorum and the case couldn't be heard. That means that the appellants -- in this case they happened to be corporatiosn -- are essentially denied their day in the court of last resort. Don't you see that that could be a problem?
I'm not a person oozing with sympathy for corporations, but that's really not the point. The point is that the Supreme Court is made up of so many individuals who have close ties to corporations that the Court is essentially unavailable to address certain constitutional issues. Granted, there are a lot of corporations; this case might just be a very strange mix involving extreme coincidence that is unlikely to be repeated.
But I wonder.
That isn't what I am refering to
I was responding to this complaint about the court's attachment to corporations.
I see that
but it's part of the problem if these guys are so well connected to these big businesses that they'll have to recuse themselves when the issues surrounding them pop up.
Maybe my concern is overdrawn, but that was the idea behind my post.
I am far from a fat cat
But by looking at the list of companies, I would have had to recuse myself as well. Those investments are some of the safest in terms of the world and provide good returns.
Which only reinforces my point
I'm not questioning the wisdom of the members in their investment choices. I'm not suggesting that corporations are evil or that people who invest in them are evil. What I'm saying is that it strikes me as a dangerous situation for our judicial system if the membership of the Supreme Court is so connected to corporations that they are unable to hear cases for lack of a quorum. That's got to be disturbing for the corporations themselves in this case, but the roles of appellant and appellee could have been reversed. Can you imagine the hue and cry over the same decision if the roles were reversed? And wouldn't it lend all kinds of ammunition to those who insist that our judicial system is all bought and paid for by big business interests anyway?
The morality of corporations
Indeed, and this is where state capitalists exhibit deafness to criticisms of corporations.
Corporations aren't moral or immoral— they're amoral. How could they be anything but? They don't have minds. They are a paper fiction.
We do expect morality from human beings, which is why the notion of corporate personhood is a cosmically bad idea.
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relocating from Indianapolis, IN to RTP, NC soon; got any advice for me?
I wouldn't recommend drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity for everyone, but they've always worked for me. -- Hunter S. Thompson
Perfectly said.