response 75 of 107:

Oct 30 19:05 UTC 2003

rcurl, the ACLU is asking it be overturned on those 14th amendment grounds?
On what grounds would you ask it to be overturned if not those?  Since   you
think the law should be reversed, as I do, you must think it unconstitutional
right?

response 77 of 107:

Oct 30 19:22 UTC 2003

you said that there "is no such thing as equal protection under the 
law", and I cited you the exact words in the Constitution.  How do you 
claim it does not contradict you?  It SAYS 'Equal Protection'  Are 
saying that guaranteeing "equal protection under the law" does not mean 
the same thing as being guaranteed "equal protection of its laws"?

In any case, it is not for you or I to say as a fact whether the law is 
unconstitutional.  That is for the judges to decide.  The ACLU is 
challenging the law on 14th amendment grounds though, so obviously 
their lawyers are arguing that it is.  

response 79 of 107:

Oct 30 19:56 UTC 2003

The Ninth Amendment takes care of that - equal protection applies to
all under federal law by virtue of the extension of those rights through
the Ninth Amendment (as has been upheld by the Supreme Court). 

Re #75: good question. I'm not a lawyer and indeed the ACLU may see an
"equal protection" issue in this. What I see was a legislature and a
governor contravening the unanimous conclusions of a series of legal
decisions in state courts without arguing specifically against the
substance of those decisions. That is, they acted in an arbitrary fashion. 
There must be a constitutional basis for reversing those actions. Perhaps
"equal protection" is it but it seems to me there must be something more
fundamental in sustaining legal rights granted by the courts. 

response 81 of 107:

Oct 31 02:18 UTC 2003

jp2, the Courts don't have to rule on equal protection being a 
fundamental right because it is in the Constitution. 

"..NOR DENY
TO ANY PERSON WITHIN ITS JURISDICTION THE EQUAL PROTECTION OF ITS LAWS"

As it is explicitly stated as something which CANNOT be denied, that 
makes the right to it fundamental.


and re #70, klg: ""A private bill is one providing benefits to 
specified individuals (including corporate bodies). Individuals 
sometimes request relief through private law when administrative or 
legal remedies are exhausted, but Congress seems more often to view 
private legislation as appropriate in cases for which no other remedy 
is available, and when its enactment would, in a broad sense, afford 
equity"

So you are saying the wishes of individuals, and the powers of the 
courts to protect the wishes of these individuals, can be overridden by 
the state legislature at any time they please?  So at any time a 
citizen loses in court, and has the money to pay off the legislature, 
he can get the legislature to write a law that circumvents the court?  
Surely you must see that allowing such weakens the Judicial system.  
Klg, what you suggest is a recipe for a coup d'etat.  If a radical 
fringe party like the Nazis got temporary majority control of a state 
legislature, you are saying they could circumvent the constitution by 
passing tens of thousands of "private laws", making private laws for 
thousands upon thousands of "private individuals"   Surely you see this 
can't work.  If a legislature enacts a "private law" to confer extra 
rights upon an individual citizen that no other individual has, surely 
this is unconstitutional under the 14th amendment (equal protection for 
all-- if you are protecting one citizen more than others, you are not 
providing equal protection under the law)  And even in the citation you 
gave, in this case this "private law" does NOT provide equity for 
everyone on a broad basis.  All this law does is allow one woman to be 
exempt from laws and legal standards that all of the rest of us are 
still subject to.  

This is a case that was heard again and again in the courts.  The 
woman's husband and two of her friends swore in court that this woman 
stated that were she ever in such a situation as this, she would want 
to die.  The doctors, the lawyers and the judges have repeatedly 
accepted that this is her wish.  So the state legislature and the 
governor have intervened to superimpose the will of the state OVER the 
will of the individual.  If jp2 and klg support that, they must really 
WANT the state controlling people's lives and making people's decisions 
for them.  Jp2 and klg must be Communists.

response 85 of 107:

Oct 31 19:00 UTC 2003

Not at all. Corporations are not people, but financial constructs. They
are as much persons as robots controlled by persons are, which is not at all.

response 87 of 107:

Oct 31 19:33 UTC 2003

Again - you're wrong. The type of "personhood" conveyed by creation of
a corporation is up to the people writing the laws. If the laws don't
allow corporations to vote, they don't vote. There may be arguments for
and against corporations voting, but those are all irrelevant to the
fact that corporations are human constructs that have certain rights
and limitations, and one of the latter is they don't vote. 

response 89 of 107:

Oct 31 20:19 UTC 2003

The Supreme Court says you are wrong. That quote is from a court reporter's
comments in an 1886 case. Here are some comments on the case and situation
from http://www.corpwatch.org/bulletins/PBD.jsp?articleid=7110

"The notion of "corporate personhood" was adopted by the Supreme Court
under very dubious circumstances, when a court reporter used the term in a
head note he created for an 1886 Court decision *that actually declined to
address the issue*. (The case was Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific
Railroad Co., 118 U.S. 394.) [Emphasis added.]

"In a later 1889 case, Minneapolis & St. Louis Railway Company (129 U.S. 
26), Justice Field cited Santa Clara as holding that corporations are
persons, and that inaccurate notion of Santa Clara's holding remains
today. Nonetheless, other Supreme Court decisions support the opposite
view. The Court stated in a 1990 decision, Austin v. Michigan Chamber of
Commerce, that because corporations have "state-conferred . . . 
structures," and "[s]tate law grants [them] special advantages," their
political speech can be regulated by the state. In other words, they do
not have the constitutional right to free speech." 

response 93 of 107:

Nov 1 02:02 UTC 2003

I sometimes do legal translations which include the phrase 'legal person' -
meaning a company not an individual.

response 99 of 107:

Nov 2 21:16 UTC 2003

<sarcasm>
 
I love jp2's solution to voting fraud:  legalize and tax it.
It would basically let everyone have as many votes as they
have money for incorporation papers.
 
Being able to nail the Chicago machine for tax evasion
(the same thing that got Capone) would be a further benefit.
And those poor black folks on the south side didn't really
deserve to have any influence anyway, right?
 
</sarcasm>