Bill Moyers: Why 'We The People' Must Triumph Over Corporate Power

[Uncle Joe]

4. Kicked and recommended with one quibble, in Santa Clara vs Southern Pacific the Supreme Court never

ruled on the issue of personhood for corporations.

All subsequent SC decisions using this as precedent were basing it on a headnote by a court reporter; who had been a former President of the Newburgh and New York Railway.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Clara_County_v._Southern_Pacific_Railroad

"The decisions reached by the Supreme Court are promulgated to the legal community by way of books called United States Reports. Preceding every case entry is a headnote, a short summary in which a court reporter summarizes the opinion as well as outlining the main facts and arguments. Headnotes are defined as "not the work of the Court, but are simply the work of the Reporter, giving his understanding of the decision, prepared for the convenience of the profession."[3]

The court reporter, former president of the Newburgh and New York Railway Company, J.C. Bancroft Davis, wrote the following as part of the headnote for the case:

"One of the points made and discussed at length in the brief of counsel for defendants in error was that "corporations are persons within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States." Before argument, Mr. Chief Justice Waite said: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 to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does."[4]

In other words, the headnote indicated that corporations enjoyed the same rights under the Fourteenth Amendment, adopted in 1868, as did natural persons.[5] However, this issue was not decided by the Court."

Former Justice Hugo Black nailed it, history shows the people were told that the 14th Amendment was intended to protect weak and helpless human beings, when it was passed and not remove corporations from the control of state goverments.

The Civil War was fought to end slavery and keep the the nation united, not to promote new authoritarian corporate supremacist masters over the people and their representative governments.

Thanks for the thread, marmar.