A couple months ago the Supreme Court ruled that restricting corporate political spending amounted to restricting free speech. In this view, corporations are pretty much equivalent to people. Would that have seemed reasonable to the Founding Fathers?

In a word, no.

I read this opinion carefully — I'm trained as a historian, not a lawyer. Chief Justice Roberts lays out an ideologically pure view of corporations as associations of citizens — leveling differences between companies, schools and other groups. So in his view Boeing is no different from Harvard, which is no different from the NAACP, or Citizens United, or my local neighborhood civic association. It's lovely prose, but as a matter of history the majority is simply wrong.

Let me put it this way: the Founders did not confuse Boston's Sons of Liberty with the British East India Company. They could distinguish among different varieties of association — and they understood that corporate personhood was a legal fiction that was limited to a courtroom. It wasn't literal. Corporations could not vote or hold office. They held property, and to enable a shifting group of shareholders to hold that property over time and to sue and be sued in court, they were granted this fictive personhood in a limited legal context.

Early Americans had a far more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of corporations than the Court gives them credit for. They were much more comfortable with retaining pre-Revolutionary city or school charters than with creating new corporations that would concentrate economic and political power in potentially unaccountable institutions. When you read Madison in particular, you see that he wasn't blindly hostile to banks during his fight with Alexander Hamilton over the Bank of the United States. Instead, he's worried about the unchecked power of accumulations of capital that come with creating a class of bankers.

So even as this generation of Americans became comfortable with the idea of using the corporate form as a way to set priorities and mobilize capital, they did their best to make sure that those institutions were subordinate to elected officials and representative government. They saw corporations as corrupting influences on both the economy at large and on government — that's why they described the East India Company as imperium in imperio, a sort of "state within a state." This wasn't an outcome they were looking to replicate.

Labels: corporatism, JOhn Roberts, Supreme Court, wingnuttia

U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts said Tuesday the scene at President Obama's State of the Union address was "very troubling" and the annual speech has "degenerated to a political pep rally."

Obama chided the court, with the justices seated before him in their black robes, for its decision on a campaign finance case.

Responding to a University of Alabama law student's question, Roberts said anyone was free to criticize the court, and some have an obligation to do so because of their positions.

"So I have no problems with that," he said. "On the other hand, there is the issue of the setting, the circumstances and the decorum.

"The image of having the members of one branch of government standing up, literally surrounding the Supreme Court, cheering and hollering while the court — according the requirements of protocol — has to sit there expressionless, I think is very troubling."

Breaking from tradition, Obama criticized the court's decision that allows corporations and unions to freely spend money to run political ads for or against specific candidates.

"With all due deference to the separation of powers the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections," Obama said in January.

Justice Samuel Alito was the only justice to respond at the time, shaking his head and mouthing the words "not true" as Obama continued.

Roberts told the students he wonders whether justices should attend the speeches.

"I'm not sure why we're there," said Roberts, a Republican nominee who joined the court in 2005.

Labels: assholes, JOhn Roberts, Republican WATBs, whining

“I would recommend taking medication,” Dr. Barkley said. “The intervals tend to get shorter and shorter, and people tend to have recurrent seizures.”

He explained: “The brain learns from practice. The more you practice, the better you get, whether you’re playing the piano or having seizures. The more you have, the more you’re going to have. Most neurologists feel that the best way to intervene is to get the seizures under control as quickly as possible.”

Dr. Robert S. Fisher, director of the epilepsy center at Stanford University and a past president of the American Epilepsy Society, said: “In my view, it would be reasonable not to treat. It sounds like he went 14 years between seizures, and that’s a lot of pills to take to prevent the next seizure 14 years from now. The new ones are better than the old ones in terms of side effects, but they all have potential side effects and risks.”

Doctors say a complete medical workup is needed to find out if the two reported seizures were really the only ones that have occurred, because people with epilepsy can have mild seizures that they are not aware of. Neurologists often ask family members whether patients have certain symptoms, like daydreaming or blanking out for brief intervals, and not snapping out of it when others try to speak to them. Other symptoms may include dizziness, sensations in the stomach, feelings of déjà vu or noticing odd smells or tastes in the mouth — experiences that the patient may not recognize as seizures.

Often, Dr. Barkley said, a patient will report having had one seizure, but when asked about these other symptoms will say, “Oh, yes, that happens all the time.”

If such symptoms are frequent, it may sway the decision in favor of treatment.

Dr. Cynthia L. Harden, a professor of neurology at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, said it would be important to perform brain-wave studies to look for abnormal electrical activity in the brain, to get an idea of where the seizures may be starting and how frequent they are.

Dr. Harden said such studies during sleep were especially useful, and could help in making the decision about treatment. In people with epilepsy, Dr. Harden said, sleep deprivation can be a potent cause of seizures. The chief justice has had a busy schedule recently, including a two-week trip to Europe during which he attended conferences and taught.

Labels: health, JOhn Roberts

Labels: JOhn Roberts, Supreme Court