How bogus is this? Corporate Free Speech?!

I thought the courts ruled a lot time ago that Corporations do not have free speech, that their marketing practices can be regulated by the government.

So where does this judge in the new do-not-call ruling, Edward Nottingham, get off saying: "The registry creates a burden on one type of speech based solely on its content, without a logical, coherent privacy-based or prevention-of-abuse-based reason supporting the disparate treatment of different categories of speech." (Quote from ruling put on CNN.com http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/09/25/congress.no.call/index.html)

Corporations do not have free speech rights. Corporations are not people.

he called it commercial speech. It stinks to high heaven of hypocrisy. you don't see these judges standing up for those of us who dissented (and were called traitors), or were fired for not towing the GOP talking points line... but try to attach a corporations non-right to solicit you w/o your request, and they scream bloody murder.

I tell you, things have just gone haywire in this country.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it also the same bullshit reasoning that was a RW talking point during the whole debacle over campaign finance reform? They were saying that throwing buckets of cash at people is perfectly ok and any attempts to rein it in is restricting free speech of corporations, IIRC.

Corporate personhood is horseshit, and screws the ordinary person. This is just another instance. What cracks me up is that the people who advocate this are the same ones that bring up flag burning amendments and want to throw liberals in jail for daring to criticize Whistle Ass.

The corporation was granted the rights of personhood in an 1856 Supreme Court ruling
I cannot remember the name of the ruling but if you are interested I will post it later when I have more time.
The ruling granted them all the rights of personhood but limited the liability.

But the court did NOT actually grant the rights of corporate personhood. That was inferred from a Court Secretary's notes, and unfortunately used as precedent in later cases.

Here's a page I found on it:
http://reclaimdemocracy.org/personhood/index.html

BTW, I thought the recent Nike case (kasky vs nike) said that Nike did NOT have the right of free speech? Oh wait...it looks like they finally settled. Is that right?

The ruling giving corporations personhood was in 1886. Check below for the details.

Since these people use my personal property (telephone owned by me) to take advantage of their 'free commerical speech', why can't you or I walk up to any business and plaster signs over their property advertising my...oh, I don't know... babysitting services, home business, competiting goods, etc. ?

and corporate personhood:

http://reclaimdemocracy.org/nike/

Kasky v. Nike (Nike v. Kasky at the U.S. Supreme Court) involved the Nike Corporation's appeal of an April 2002 California Supreme Court ruling. The California court rejected claims by Nike's lawyers that the First Amendment immunized the company from being sued for an allegedly deceptive public relations campaign. On September 12, 2003, the parties announced a settlement that will preclude a trial.

This page presents all sides of this case and the larger issues of corporate or commercial speech. We engaged in the Nike case as a key opportunity to re-examine the judicial creation of constitutional rights for corporations and to raise awareness of the far-reaching negative effects that precedent has for democracy and our lives.

you'll have to come up with a circumstance where they don't allow corporations their free speech rights. Once corps got personhood, the only thing the government could abrige was their marketing practices.

I did several essays about the rise of corporate power in America and it can all be traced to one Supreme Court Decision: In the 1886 Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad the court ruled that corporations were assumed to be persons.

This was NOT the first time corporations (which are nothing more than entities setup BY government) tried to do this, however, in 1886, Libertarianism ran rampant in America, corruption was the norm, the votes in the halls of congress were bought and sold.

In essense, a right-wing, pro business court LEGISLATED from the bench and the Bill of Rights has NOTHING to do with legally created entities (or NON-persons).

Two things Conservatives bitch about the most are bench legislation and a re-interpreting the constituion to advance a certain agenda. In the case of the 1886 Decision, Conservatives fall interestingly silent and only their hypocrasy shines.

"In the 1886 Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad the court ruled that corporations were assumed to be persons."

I think this is debatable. Here's the part of the decision I bet you're referring to:

"The special grounds of defense by each of the defendants were: (1) That its road is a part of a continuous postal and military route, constructed and maintained under the authority of the United States, by means in part obtained from the general government; that the company having, with the consent of the state, become subject to the requirements, conditions, and provisions of the acts of congress, it thereby ceased to be merely a state corporation, and became one of the agencies or instrumentalities employed by the general government to execute its constitutional powers; and that the franchise to operate a postal and military route, for the transportation of troops, munitions of war, public stores, and the mails, being derived from the United States, cannot, without their consent, be subjected to state taxation. (2) That the provisions of the constitution and laws of California, in respect to the assessment for taxation of the property of railway corporations operating railroads in more than one county, are in violation of the fourteenth amendment of the constitution, in so far as they require the assessment of their property at its full money value, without making deduction, as in the case of railroads operated in one county, and of other corporations, and of natural persons, for the value of the mortgages covering the property assessed; thus imposing upon the defendant unequal burdens, and to that extent denying to it the equal protection of the laws. (3) That what is known as section 3664 of the Political Code of California, under the authority of which, in part, the assessment was made, was not constitutionally enacted by the legislature, and had not the force of law. ( 4) That no void assessment appears in fact to have been made by the state board. (5) That no interest is recoverable in this action until after judgment. (6) <118 U.S. 394, 410> That the assessment upon which the action is based is void, because it included property which the state board of equalization had no jurisdiction, under any circumstances, to assess; and that, as such illegal part was so blended with the balance that it cannot be separated, the entire assessment must be treated as a nullity."

That's taken from findlaw, by the way.

Note the bolded portions. Now, from the summary of the case (in fact, the very first line),

"The defendant Corporations are persons within the intent of the clause in section 1 of the Fourteen Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. "

No such pronouncement, as can be seen from the actual decision above, is ever made in the decision itself. Corporate personhood is thus demonstrated to be the fiction it is.

You guys are much more informed on this than am I. But I should have known that.
It seems to me that there should be a law or an amendment to the constitution that says that only a living person can be afforded the rights of personhood.

these calls started logging calls and charging companies a service charge (oh, say $3.00/minute) for the use of their time in answering or listening to these sales pitches? What if this form of marketing would become an expense instead of a revenue for them? Is that possible? And why isn't this form of marketing considered an invasion of my home? I don't leave my door open so that anyone who would like to can walk into my home whenever they like. How is an electronic door to my home considered community property? I don't think this is a free speech issue, but that it is a privacy issue.

junk unsolicited fax's that one recieves, which in fact cost money as well as lost time (in terms of paper and toner) and there is no recourse by which to recover my loss. I am speaking as a small business owner, but as a private citizen this would also hold true. In fact I have to waste more time and money to respond to these unwanted fax's to have my phone # removed from thier list.

repealing corporate personhood. I guess that would confuse the sheeple, though.

and I strongly suspect it would be.

making corporate personhood an issue.

I (BRIEFLY!) worked for two telemarketers in high school (hey, it beat flipping burgers). Based on what I saw and heard (lots of industry rags laying around in the break room), most telemarketing businesses are small, privately held firms...not corporations. The first company I worked for was owned by one guy, he owned it, ran it, answered the office phone, and cut our paychecks himself (pretty busy guy since he had about 100 employees). The second company I worked for had about 300 telemarketers and was owned by a 3-way private partnership. In both cases, the owners legally WERE the company.

This is a pretty common situation, from what I understand, and only the biggest firms bother with going the corporate route.

That will learn em