Justice Isn't Blind Anymore

Yesterday, my fragile sense of confidence in the sound and fair foundations of the American government was completely and forever shattered. While I am not a scholar of the Constitution, having only studied it in high school and college, I know what all Americans know (or at least, should know). The founding fathers of this nation designed a government that would keep one person from having too much power, would allow the citizens to elect their representatives to act for them in the governing body, and would uphold the rights that each person was granted in this newly forming country. Those rights were carefully and explicitly defined in the Bill of Rights about a decade later, at least as far as they could be defined by a bunch of white men who were living before indoor plumbing even existed. And to guarantee that the governing bodies were upholding those rights and following the laws laid out in the Constitution, those men even came up with a system that involved judges, who I suppose they felt were the most impartial, best educated, and noble of people. The Supreme Court of the United States was intended to be the final voice of reason and fairness and law in this land. The nine people appointed to that most revered of benches are placed there for the specific purpose of interpreting the Constitution as it was written, without personal bias, without prejudice, without the intent to act out their own will.

The saying "justice is blind" and the statues of the lady with the blindfold did, until now, mostly ring true. But justice on the Supreme Court isn't blind anymore - now we know it sees the color green.

I don't know exactly how it happened - what machinations and convolutions were involved to get from point A (the corporations with all the money) to point B (the 5 Justices that decided that corporations are the same as individual people), but it happened. Money, it seems, really can buy everything now. It will now be able to buy elections, and as the director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said, "we won't have the senator from Arkansas or the congressman from North Carolina, but the senator from Wal-Mart and the congressman from Bank of America". Although the founding fathers of the United States of America didn't have any notion that the internet, cell phones, or flush toilets would be available to almost every American someday, they certainly knew what business was, and what powerful groups with money were, and yes, they even know what "corporations" were. In fact, corporate entities had been around for centuries by the time Jefferson et al were writing the Constitution, although originally they were called "Chartered Companies". In fact, I can guarantee that all of the founding fathers were familiar with the king of corporations back then - the British East India Company - which was infamous for its greed, exploitation, ruthless business practices, price gouging, and astronomical profits. Remember the Boston Tea Party? The tea that was dumped in the harbor was tea from none other than the British East India Company.

The fact that the Constitution was not written to give specific rights to corporations, and in fact doesn't even mention corporations, even though they existed at the time, were well known and powerful, says something to me. It tells me that the authors of the Constitution didn't want to give any special rights or privileges to corporate entities. They wanted to give rights to individual people. Every right detailed in the Bill of Rights refers to the rights of individuals, not corporations. And knowing how the men who wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights felt about corporations back then, I am certain that they did not want the Constitution or the Bill of Rights to be used to protect those entities.

Sadly, since I now know that the majority of our Supreme Court believes that a corporation is a person, and deserves the same rights as an individual person according to the Bill of Rights (even though it can't breathe, live independently in its own house, talk with others, cast a vote in an election, get married, etc) I know that it is a small step - a dangerously small step - to the conclusion that an embryo or a fetus is a person, and deserves all the rights that we apparently can't guarantee its mother. The reversal of Roe vs. Wade is on the horizon, and since the Supreme Court does not seem to believe that they themselves need to uphold the intent, spirit, or letter of the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, many more changes that screw us individual people may be coming as well.

So thanks, "Justice" Kennedy, "Chief Justice" Roberts, "Justice" Alito, "Justice" Thomas, and "Justice" Scalia, for making it clear that your agenda is not to uphold the laws or rights of the people of this potentially great country, but to uphold the rights of the greedy corporations who are inexplicably doing well financially at a time when us little people are struggling. I know this is not what Thomas Jefferson and James Madison envisioned. At least they're dead and they don't have to live with the outcome of this catastrophic decision like all of us voting Americans do.