On The Supreme Court

So
the Supreme Court has been igniting passions, has it? Of its Citizens
United decision, people cried: "shameless hypocrisy," "nothing
short of fraud..." "Truly frightening..." "a narrow
elite is imposing itself through the legal system..."

There
are mobilizings to amend the constitution, impeach "the Supreme Court
5," instruct the president on Justice Stevens' replacement.
Senator Schumer, here in the Empire State, is working on a bill that
would force business and nonprofit corporations to reveal their
involvement
in elections!

If
Schumer and others are determined to confront the Supreme Court, maybe
they are unearthing the sources of Citizens United and related
constitutional
infelicities, formulating research questions like: By what flimflam
did the 1787 "Miracle in Philadelphia" convention deny the majority
of humans in this new nation standing before the law? Why did the people

who were people in the early 1800s let Supreme Court justices
seize the authority to amend the Constitution?

But
Schumer isn't very determined. He told the NY Times Company the other
day: "What we're trying to do first is make sure everything we do
is within the constitutional mandate set by the Court."

What's
with such obeisance? Why allow humans in black robes to limit our
aspirations,
supply our words, command our deeds? It's not so hard to ask: So,
what IS the United States Supreme Court? What has been the Court's
role in valiant human struggles to nullify England's and the USA's
defining of whole classes of people -- the majority, actually -- as
unequal, inferior, invisible? How often has it invoked the Anglo-Saxon's

unique reverence for law to instruct the rabble on progress and
civilization?

When
slaves, free Africans, Native peoples, women, indentured servants,
immigrants,
birth control and sexual orientation advocates appealed to the
Constitution
for remedy, how did our honorable justices craft the law of the land?
When farmers, workers and whole communities built a mass movement to
form a cooperative commonwealth instead of a corporate-industrial order,

whose values, sayeth the Court, wielded the Constitution against whom?

When
people opposing US government imperialism and wars vexed white, male,
propertied elites privileged with constitutional head starts, who, ruled

the Court, properly called upon the armed might of the nation?

It's
not a pretty story.

If
the constitutional law professor who is president were somebody else,
he might jump into this teaching moment. His first "Uncolonizing Our
Minds" Chat could go like this:

"We can avoid careless
analysis. Here's something I found in an otherwise astute critique
of Citizens United: 'Congress passed reasonable regulations [on
corporate
spending in elections]. And over the decades the Courts have affirmed
these regulations over and over, to keep the voice of actual citizens
from being drowned out...'

"Alas, this does not
pass the straight face test.

"Campaign finance laws
regulating corporations (like laws legalizing corporate lobbying, like
laws legalizing corporate domination in the workplace and corporate
poisoning of the Earth), have been cheesy from birth. The 'good
precedent'
campaign spending cases Citizens United modified -- such as Austin --
were no less whimsical than Citizens United...and incoherent to boot.
Court opinions on corporations and the Constitution -- starting with
the Dartmouth College case in 1819 -- have consistently affirmed the
authority of a corporate few to do the real governing in these United
States. So many of the Court's decisions in 1st and 14th amendments
cases violated those amendments' clear intent and explicit language.

"Like, BEFORE Citizens
United, our corporate class didn't drown out public debate? Didn't
dictate the framing of issues and legislation? Didn't filter out
candidates?
BEFORE Citizens United, financial corporations were not
transferring
unimaginable wealth from the many to the few? BEFORE Citizens United,
people could relatively easily stop US government wars and preparations
for wars? End this government's manipulations of other peoples, flora,
fauna, mountains, oceans, seeds, genes and governance?

"Majorities used to have
constitutional authority to instruct their representatives to launch
sane and just transitions in energy, health, agriculture, finance,
manufacturing,
media, the workplace? Majorities enjoyed constitutional authority
to define business corporations as state actors? Render them subordinate

to municipalities and states?

"Like, BEFORE Citizens
United, the United States of America wasn't a minority-ruled
corporate-imperial
empire?

"I'm delighted that
people have been reading Citizens United. For those shocked at its lack
of logic, argument by assertion, manipulation of precedent and juridical

legerdemain, I suggest you read a few score more opinions.

"I commend to you the
venerated Chief Justice Marshall -- in my book, he's Mr.
Argument-By-Assertion.
Of course, he's in good company: Taney, Bradley, Waite, Brown, Field,
White, Fuller, Brewer, Story, Swayne, Rehnquist and many more justices
ably justified injustice. Holmes from his Brahmin perch deftly mocked
appellants' working class origins and perspectives. Taft saw anarchists
lurking behind every blade of grass. And check out Chief Justice Warren
-- you might be surprised at the imperious well-settled law the Warren
court chose not to trifle with.

"Read what the Court
actually wrote in response to constitutional claims by slaves, women,
workers, free speech and human rights petitioners across two centuries
and into this 21st. Don't miss the cases adjudicating Native people's
struggles in every generation, or those addressing people's efforts
to make peace with our planet

"I realize that some
advise caution about opening up dangerous floodgates. But as far as
I'm concerned, people yearning to be free and self-governing are the
floodwaters. We've been kept in check by grand myths and relentless
agitprop about the nation's founding, Anglo-American legal traditions,
our Constitution, the rule of law. But those gates are made of fairy
tales. They exist only in our minds. There's no time like our time
to start tearing them down.

"Then if we ever DO finally

turn ourselves into free people, maybe we'll know better than to let
our sovereign governing authority be snatched from our hands by a few
people in black robes..."