Labor’s Enemies Wear Black Robes, Not White Hoods

May 26, 2015
Working People Have No Leverage

Labor’s Enemies Wear Black Robes, Not White Hoods

by DAVID MACARAY


One doesn’t have to be a professional historian or archivist to appreciate just how virulently skewed the U.S. judicial system has been in its dealings with working people. One doesn’t have to be a legal scholar to acknowledge that moneyed interests have always been provided with their own form of “justice.” All one has to do is pay attention.

From Day One, the federal courts and Supreme Court have taken the side of employers, peddlers, merchants, plantation owners, industrialists, entrepreneurs, bankers, and any other remotely Establishment agent (including law enforcement officials) who more or less stands in opposition to the interests of the working masses. Not to get all “Marxian” here, but it’s true.

That shouldn’t surprise anyone. After all, whom do federal judges typically pal around with? The Country Club set, or men and women who actually toil for a living? Indeed, if it happened to be the latter, it could be the opening of a classic joke: “A welder, bricklayer and federal judge are drinking together in a bar….”

Granted, the High Court has thrown the occasion bone in the direction of the “proletariat,” but that gesture has usually been in the form of extending due process or some other civil libertarian right to the underdog. It’s different when it comes to money and property. In matters involving economic hegemony, workers have historically been pissed on from a great height.

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/05/26/labors-enemies-wear-black-robes-not-white-hoods/