Justice Sotomayor!
In her first appearance as a U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Sonia Sotomayor questioned the concept of corporate personhood, which endows corporations with constitutional rights that persons enjoy.Swoon. I love her.
The Wall Street Journal reported, regarding the oral arguments over Citizens United, that "Justice Sotomayor went further, suggesting that the court's error was not in upholding limits on corporate speech, but its far earlier decisions that first granted corporations the legal status of persons."
...JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: [W]hat you are suggesting is that the courts who created corporations as persons, gave birth to corporations as persons, and there could be an argument made that that was the Court's error to start with, not Austin or McConnell, but the fact that the Court imbued a creature of State law with human characteristics.
For those who don't understand my passion about this particular issue, one of the things that corporate personhood entitles corporations to is free speech protections, and, because political donations are considered free speech, that's what paved the way for our Congress to be bought and sold by corporations.
It's not like I think this is going to change because Sotomayor questioned the decision, but I just love her endlessly for challenging it at all.
[H/T to Shaker TinaH.]
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