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Supreme Court: Corporations Can Buy Judges
You've heard that a recent Supreme Court decision said that corporations can give unlimited funds to politicians.
But did you realize that it said that corporations can give unlimited money to judges?
As William K. Black - professor of economics and law, and the senior regulator during the S & L crisis - pointed out last week:
The Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision allows businesses to make unlimited political contributions to judges and
politicians. When judges are elected, the need for these contributions
inherently turns judges into politicians. Sympathetic judges are
corrupt businesses’ most valuable allies. Corporations and their
senior officials can commit civil or criminal wrongs with impunity if
their case is assigned to a friendly judge. The Robber Barons often
had judges on their payrolls. Judges can serve a corporation as both a
shield and a sword. They can declare statutes and regulations
unlawful. They can issue favorable decisions when corporations sue
their critics, which can intimidate, tie up, or even bankrupt the
critics.
The fact that corporations are “investing” so heavily in
getting pro-business judges elected demonstrates that their CEOs
believe that the election of friendly judges will increase their
incomes and decrease the risk that they will ever be sanctioned. It’s a
business decision – not a decision based on which judicial candidate
would be more qualified or better serve justice. CEOs want to win
cases when doing so would be unjust and contrary to the law, which is
why they hire top attorneys and make the contributions necessary to
elect judges they believe will be allies. The empirical evidence in
Texas shows that judicial elections and contributions produces perverse
dynamics. One study showed that hiring the former law firm of a Texas
Supreme Court justice markedly increased the chances that the Texas
Supreme Court would exercise its discretion and hear your appeal from
an adverse decision. Hiring the former law firm of the Chief Justice
of the Texas Supreme Court produced an even greater chance of having
one’s appeal heard.
As Yves Smith noted recently:
A Mother Jones article, “Permission to Encroach the Bench,”
(hat tip reader Francois T) discusses how already big ticket battles
over state supreme court seats are likely to rocket to a new level of
priciness:
For a down-ballot category that even
well-intentioned voters pay little attention to, judicial races are
astonishingly expensive. In 2004, $9.3 million was spent in the race
for a single seat (pdf) on the Illinois Supreme Court. That’s higher
than the price tag of more than half the US Senate races in the nation
that year. In 2006, three candidates for chief justice in Alabama
raised $8.2 million combined.
But those sums could look paltry
compared to the spending likely to be unleashed in the wake of the
Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling. In all, 39 states elect
judges—and with the stakes including everything from major class
actions to zoning and contract cases to consumer protection, workplace,
and environmental issues, corporations have always taken a major
interest in those races. The US Chamber of Commerce, Forbes reported in
2003, has devoted at least $100 million to electing judges sympathetic
to its agenda. “No organization has had more success in the past 10
years of judicial elections,” says James Sample, a professor at Hofstra
University who studies judicial reform issues. “Its winning percentage
would be the envy of any sports franchise.” Citizens United has
essentially wiped out not just federal restrictions on campaign
spending, but many state-level regulations as well, Sample notes, and
that’s “going to increase the ability of corporations, and to a much
lesser extent unions, to engage in electioneering that is basically
aimed at winning particular cases.” And given the low profile of these
races, it may not take that much to sway that outcome, notes Bert
Brandenburg, executive director of the advocacy group Justice at Stake.
“A judicial election is a better investment for anyone spending money”
than, say, a congressional campaign.Note the
reference to Alabama, a state I know a wee bit about, and my local
sources say the Mother Jones figures are greatly understated, and
attorneys in the state who’ve turned over a few rocks put the price tag
for a state supreme court seat at $12 million. I’ve had a quick look at
a Supreme Court justice’s house. It is in an implausibly costly
district for his income (and no, there’s no heiress wife to explain the
discrepancy).
Why is Alabama such a valuable state to control?
It used to be a favorite venue for class action lawyers, since juries
often handed out multi-million-dollar awards. Getting business-friendly
jurists in place at the highest court has meant that any verdict, no
matter how egregious and damaging the violations, is cut to $1 million.
And
the degree of banana republic behavior is reaching new levels.
Consider: a once prominent corporate firm has been reduced to becoming
primarily a foreclosure mill. However, because longevity counts in the
South, and many of the firm’s senior partners still dine with judges, it
has clout well in excess of its fallen standing.
On a case
which is now being tried, this fading firm (we’ll call it Billem) has
managed to get the case (which is being heard only by a judge) moved
from the court before a decision has been rendered to a sympathetic
appeal court judge. In addition, Billem is appending four other cases
which that have already been decided and are past the time frame for
appeal (in Alabama, you have 43 days in which to file an appeal). The
rationale is that these cases present similar issues, but that still
has the effect of reopening cases which under existing law are settled.
For lay reader, if you miss the deadline for appeal, you can’t
appeal…..except in when the right people in Alabama want it to occur.
So
this isn’t merely having judges who will provide the opinions big
business wants. We now have a court running roughshod over basic
elements of procedure. The last bastion of defense of the individual is
being gutted, to the point where even the forms of the law will be
ignored if that’s what it takes to produce the outcome the big money
interests need.
I wrote in April:
As Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said:
We
may have democracy [or you can substitute the word "republic"], or we
may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have
both.***
Of course, antitrust laws were enacted
to protect the economy and democracy, but - like the Depression-era
laws separating depository banking from investment banking - are not being enforced.And the government could use existing laws to force ill-gotten gains to be disgorged (see this and this), fraudulent transfers to be voided and - perhaps - even bonuses gained at the expense of taxpayers clawed back.
Such actions would make the 800 pound gorillas a little smaller,
helping to reduce concentration of wealth somewhat. But that would
assume that America is still a nation governed by the rule of law.Currently, it's not. Only courageous prosecutors and brave judges can restore the rule of law to America.
I wrote that before I realized that the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision opened the floodgates to corporations buying judges.
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None of this is really surprising, infuriating yes, surprising no. Folks we are in the 7th inning of our societal path as a republic. From the Romans until present day the same story has rhymed all along the way. The wealth of a treasury is gradually looted through currency devaluation and net capture of resources by the political elite and/or banking interests.
The current U.S. system that has been in place since 1913 is working as planned and the currency is close to total devaluation in terms of the removal of all real money from the system but we have a long way to go for total resource capture. Another 100yrs maybe but i think not, another 50 (within my genetically unaltered life) more likely.
We can make every attempt to change our path but we are clearly NOT in control as the dominos continue to fall in their favor (see Australian elections). We are in a fight that has gone on for generations and we need to plan generations ahead to even have a chance to bring freedom back to our country. I encourage you all to educate your children as to how we arrived here and what needs to be done to stop the legalized theivery of our work and wealth. If we are successful and that is a big if, then my 11 year old's unborn children might just be free.
there be no shelter here
.
Blind justice is long dead in America, if it ever existed at all. Judges are bought and paid for by powerful monied interests whether elected or not. The judiciary is by far the most corrupted branch of government since judges are, for the most part, answerable to no one for their misconduct, a situation allowing them to commit crimes with impunity.
It is about time that the deck was reshuffled a bit. As it has been, only the Trial Lawyers could own judges. They've been very well rewarded for those contributions.
The statement that any award greater than $1,000,000 is reduced to that amount is simply nonsense.
OverLawyered keeps track of some of the more egregious examples.
http://overlawyered.com/
and see particlularly
http://overlawyered.com/2010/09/september-7-roundup/
Actually, I notice that the California Home Owner Association lawyers aren't doing half bad either. HOAs suck! They're poison. Run!
Hey, if politicians and lawyers associations can buy them, then why can't corporations? It's only fair when you're one of the cognoscenti, right?
the judges have declared war on the population
and the world. forgive them they know not what they do.
Last I checked nobody is bullet proof, no matter how many laws they know.
I don't really think this is really a big deal, as unlike legislators, judges are required by law to recuse themselves from a case if there is some reason they might be biased.
Ignorant sucker.
Judges don't HAVE to do anything.
Foghorn Leghorn sez: "Son, I SAID SON, you trying to be funny or somethin'?"
GW,thanks for hilighting.
Further excerpt from William Black:
...Here are two examples that illustrate how false, but so influential and harmful these Austrian nostrums have become through teaching falsified economics to thousands of lawyers. Austrian law and economics is based on suppositions that have long been known to be false. Dickens famously had Mr. Bumble (in Oliver Twist) respond to being informed that the law supposed him to be responsible for his wife’s behavior by remarking that if the law supposed such an absurdity then “the law is a ass.” The dominant law and economics text on corporate law for years was by Easterbrook and Fischel. Judge Easterbrook is a colleague of Judge Posner on the 7th Circuit and Fischel was for a time Dean of the University of Chicago’s law school. They assert that “a rule against fraud is not an essential or even necessarily an important ingredient of securities markets” (1991: 283). Their book was written after Professor Fischel, as a consultant to three of the most notorious control frauds of the 1980s, tried out their theories in the real world – and found that they failed catastrophically. Fischel praised the worst frauds. Fischel & Easterbrook did not disclose to their readers that their theories were falsified in the real world. Note how extreme their claim was, the utter certainty of the claim, and the lack of any data supporting the claim – a claim they knew to be false. The taught students that, in the context of securities, we did not need:
Fraud is impossible because securities markets are “efficient” and act as if they were guided by an “invisible hand.” Markets cannot be efficient if there is accounting control fraud, so we know (on the basis of circular reasoning) that securities fraud cannot exist. Indeed, when Easterbrook and Fischel try to explain why the securities markets automatically exclude frauds their faith-based logic becomes even more humorous. They claim that honest securities issuers send one or more of three “signals” of honesty to guide investors to purchase their securities – and that only honest firms can send any of these three signals.
In reality, accounting control frauds “mimic” each of these signals and each signal aids their frauds. ...
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2010/08/william-black-theoclassical-law-and-economics-makes-the-law-an-ass.html
Please read entire link.
THE AGE OF FARCE
http://williambanzai7.blogspot.com/2010/09/farce.html
Again, George, another great piece. However, I have to ask how anyone is put-off by this at all. When all three of our branches of government are bowing down to the fourth, it should come as no surprise whatsoever that the judiciary is just as fraudulent as the executive and legislative branches.
I came up with a nifty way to surmise the entire thing, as I see it...you cannot truthfully adjudicate morality in a financial context. Simple as that. Tie an idea down with dollars and cents, and its rendered naked, bound, and ready to be raped. If anyone takes issue with the sort of vulgar picture that I'm painting, just ask yourself how many simple traffic tickets you've received in the past two years that would have been a non-issue before states and municipalities found themselves just a bit underwater. Just ask yourself if you think that it's fair and proper for a junkie to serve a longer mandatory sentence than a murderer, or a rapist, or a child molester. The judiciary is not about "right and wrong" anymore, and it hasn't been for some time. Instead, it's about how deep your pockets run.
Hahaha...the only "change" that I see here is that, instead of the deals being done in a dark alley, SCOTUS decided that it was okay to make it legal and public. Just another notch in the belt for regressive sociology.
I own a judge. It's a beauty.
You gotta get your own one of these.
I've got my own "judge"...she's a beaut.
http://www.remtek.com/arms/imi/desert/50/de50.gif
All verdicts are final, by the way. The appeals process is pretty much nonexistant.
Hell, Taurus even named their 45/410 The Judge.
I keep mine at my desk, first 2 rounds are 410, last rounds are 45s.
If you aren't gone after the first two rounds, you ain't leaving voluntarily.
And he said "doc its only a scratch"
...I'll be better doc as soon as I am able
Of course, once upon a simpler time, the best judge of all could only kill you if you had one too many before you tried driving her home.
http://btx3.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/1969_pontiac_gto_judge_large.jpg
I like my Israeli hardware...big boom, big splat. It'll hold a dozen rounds to a clip, and they're deep-dish on the front end, as she stands in the drawer of my night table. I'd prefer the old route of fists 'n faces to handle anything that words can't solve, but...it doesn't hurt to be ready for the slim chance that things get REALLY nuts.
" But that would assume that America is still a nation governed by the rule of law. Currently, it's not."
As long as the above is true, America has no future as a democratic and prosperous country. The rest is just noise!
Welcome to freedom. Thought it would be utopian? Well suprise!! It is not. Beware of those who might try to 'sell' you a more 'well managed' alternative. I personally feel great about the court decision. It does provide a certainty. The 'ref' made a call. We players now understand the rule and the game has resumed.
FREEDOM IS NOT ONLY FOR YOU IT IS FOR ALL, AND IN A TRULY FREE STATE YOU WILL BE CONFRONTED WITH COMPETITION.
Deal with it.
You are confusing anarchy and corruption with freedom. I wish to be free from anarchy and corruption.
Freedom is what you make of it. The consensus definition seems to be up in the air these days, but that's fine. I just wonder if the context isn't all fucked up at this point...actually, I'm pretty sure that that's where we've gotten off-track.
The ability to harvest very small contributions from very large numbers easily and painlessly is vital for achieving any semblance of a level playing field for an empowered citizenry whose influence is handicapped by entrenched forces of concentration.
The Individually-controlled/Commons-dedicated Account
A self-supporting , Commons-owned neutral network of accounts for both political and charitable monetary contribution... which for fundamental reasons of scale must allow a viable micro-transaction (think x-box points for action in the Commons). The resultant network catalyzes additional functionality for co-ordination of other 'social energy' utilization. (If desired, It's also the most neutral and ultimately politically viable method for the public finance of elections.)
Not the whole fix... but maybe an essential part of one.
Empowering the Commons: The Dedicated Account
http://culturalengineer.blogspot.com/2010/08/empowering-commons-dedicate...
The right way to curb lobbying is to limit the size and power of government. If you make them powerless then there's little need to lobby them.
Shrinking it has to be step one. Otherwise it would take until the end of time to prosecute all of the current mass of criminals in DC
Precisely. The problem isn't the abuse of power, it's the power to abuse.
"Of course, antitrust laws were enacted to protect the economy and democracy, but - like the Depression-era laws separating depository banking from investment banking - are not being enforced."
If the antitrust laws were enforced, the DNC and RNC would be shut down, and all the principals would be headed to prison under RICO.
My thoughts exactly. Let's keep that in mind for the next government.