Dear US Senate Judiciary Committee Members,
The Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy (POCLAD) calls on you to
complete your questioning of US Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito. Judge
Alito's position on the larger issue of this nation's democracy, trampled by
the rights and powers of corporations to govern, was left untouched and
unexplored following last week's Senate confirmation hearings.
The vast majority of non-criminal cases to be brought before the nine robed
ones of the Supreme Court in the next few years will relate to matters of
corporate "rights," protections, and dominance and their impact on the
rights of human beings in this so-called democracy. How strange, therefore,
that among the many questions posed to nominee Alito, not a single one
addressed the doctrines of corporate autonomy and authority that insulate
these collections of capital and property from control by the people and
their legislatures -- which used to exist at one time in this nation.
Have the judiciary's efforts been so successful over the last 200 years to
find corporations within the US Constitution and bestow constitutional
"rights" upon them that current lawmakers fail even to question this
democratically illegitimate reality? Indeed, for two centuries Supreme Court
justices, the closest institution we have to Kings and Queens, have been at
the center of affirming and expanding corporate rule and placing
corporations well beyond the authority of the people. We hope you do not
concur with this history and its consequences.
As the following questions were not asked of Judge Alito during his Senate
hearings, it is absolutely necessary now to determine his response to them
in writing. Only after Judge Alito responds to these concerns and his
answers are promptly made available to the general public and to all U.S.
Senators should voting on his confirmation occur.
The appointment for life of a person who will assume a position of vast and
seemingly ever growing power in our society demands an exhaustive review of
every issue area that he/she is likely to address on the high court.
Corporate constitutional rights and their impact on our rights as
self-governing human beings certainly qualifies as one such issue area. This
decision is of the utmost importance to the fate of the country.
Respectfully,
Greg Coleridge Karen Coulter Mike Ferner
Ward Morehouse Jim Price Virginia Rasmussen
Mary Zepernick
For the Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy
Phone: 508-398-1145
people@poclad.org www.poclad.org
Questions for Judge Samuel Alito:
First a bit of background. In a 1978 case, First National Bank of Boston v.
Bellotti, the Supreme Court decided, 5 to 4, that business corporations --
just as flesh and blood persons like you and me -- have a First Amendment
right to spend their money to influence elections. Chief Justice William H.
Rehnquist dissented. "It might reasonably be concluded," he wrote, "that
those properties, so beneficial in the economic sphere, pose special dangers
in the political sphere." The late Chief Justice went on to write:
"Furthermore, it might be argued that liberties of political expression are
not at all necessary to effectuate the purposes for which States permit
commercial corporations to exist."
-- Do you believe that corporate money in our elections poses "special
dangers in the political sphere"?
--Do you believe "that liberties of political expression" are necessary "to
effectuate the purposes for which States permit commercial corporations to
exist"?"
-- Do you believe that money is speech? Or is it property?
In 1886, only eighteen years after the people ratified the Fourteenth
Amendment, the Supreme Court had before it Santa Clara County v. Southern
Pacific Railroad. The issue was whether the Amendment's guarantee of equal
protection barred California from taxing property owned by a corporation
differently from property owned by a human being. Chief Justice Morrison
Waite disposed of it with a bolt-from-the-blue pronouncement: "The Court
does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the
Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a state to deny any
person the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We
are all of the opinion that it does." How would you characterize the Court's
refusal to hear argument in a momentous case before deciding it?
-- Judge Alito, was the "person" whose basic rights the framers and the
people sought to protect through the 14th amendment to the Constitution the
newly freed slave?
-- Was the "person" a corporation?
-- Is a corporation a person "born or naturalized in the United States"?
-- In proclaiming a paper entity to be a person, Judge Alito, was the court
faithful to the intent of the framers of the Amendment and to the intent of
the people who ratified it?
- Judge Alito, how would you characterize the court's refusal to hear
argument in a momentous case before deciding it?
--Would you describe the court's decision in Santa Clara County as
conservative? As radical? As open-minded?
--Would you agree that the Court that decided Santa Clara in 1886 failed to
meet the standard of judicial conduct that was met by the Court in 1973,
when it decided Roe v. Wade only after being fully briefed, hearing oral
argument, and deliberating at length?
-- You have expressed profound admiration for Judge Robert H. Bork, calling
him "one of the outstanding nominees of the 20th Century." As you know, he
famously denounced Roe as "a wholly unjustified usurpation of state
legislative authority." Without regard as to whether Roe was rightly or
wrongly decided, was Santa Clara "a wholly unjustified usurpation of state
legislative authority?"
-- Again without regard as to whether Roe was rightly or wrongly decided,
how does it strike you that the Court has declared a corporation -- a paper
entity that is neither born nor naturalized -- to be a person but has
declared a fetus not to be a person?
Note: The above questions were drawn from an article prepared by Morton
Mintz who covered the Supreme Court for the Washington Post for four years
and is a former chair of the Fund for Investigative Journalism.
POCLAD researches corporate, legal and movement histories and works with
activist organizations to develop strategies that assert human rights over
property interests.
