The Supreme Court will decide a case where the issue is whether Corporations (the other persons with free speech rights) can be held liable for violating human rights. Wanna place your bets on how the justices vote on corporate liability by Royal Dutch Shell PLC for aiding human rights violations by Nigerian government officials shakes out?
The case before the court pits the Obama administration and human rights advocates against large companies and foreign governments over allegations that Royal Dutch Shell Plc helped Nigeria crush oil exploration protests in the 1990s.
Administration attorneys and lawyers for the plaintiffs contend corporations can be held accountable in U.S. courts for committing or assisting foreign governments in torture, executions or other human rights abuses.
Attorneys for corporations argue that only individuals, such as company employees or managers involved in the abuse, can be sued, a position adopted by a U.S. appeals court in New York. Other courts ruled corporations can be held liable. […]
“Businesses involved in genocide, crimes against humanity or other serious human rights violations deserve no exemption from tort liability,” [California attorney Paul Hoffman] said in a brief filed with the court.
Not surprisingly there are a host of cases pending in which American corporations and their “security services” have been involved in murder and other crimes. For example a case is pending now in which the people of a small Indonesian village accuse Exxon of murder and torture, and against Firestone for engaging in illegal child labor in the African country of Liberia. All of these corporations support the position of Royal Dutch Shell that is is immune from claims brought under the 1789 Alien Tort Claims Act, which reads as follows:
The district courts shall have original jurisdiction of any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States.
Ah, must be nice to be a person whose money is protected as free speech, but who cannot be sued for helping tyrannical regimes murder and torture their own citizens. Some may find it odd that being a corporate person makes you above the laws that individual persons must obey, but apparently that’s the position of at least one Circuit Court. I’m laying odds that five justices (Roberts, Alto, Scalia, Thomas and Kennedy) will uphold the decision of the 2nd Circuit. I’d love to be proven wrong, but this court has consistently shown a pro-business bias split upon Conservative and liberal lines.
The [US Chamber of Commerce] now files briefs in most major business cases. The side it supported in the last term won 13 of 16 cases. Six of those were decided with a majority vote of five justices, and five of those decisions favored the chamber’s side. One of the them was Citizens United, in which the chamber successfully urged the court to guarantee what it called “free corporate speech” by lifting restrictions on campaign spending.
The chamber’s success rate is but one indication of the Roberts court’s leanings on business issues. A new study, prepared for The New York Times by scholars at Northwestern University and the University of Chicago, analyzed some 1,450 decisions since 1953. It showed that the percentage of business cases on the Supreme Court docket has grown in the Roberts years, as has the percentage of cases won by business interests.
In short, I fully expect the Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision to decide Corporations are immune from liability for actions such as aiding and abetting crimes such as murder, torture, rape, etc. in other countries. Crimes for which individuals are held responsible and liable. And people on the Right complain about gays demanding “special rights” because they want equality under the law. Wanna bet they cheer when mega-corporations escape all liability for acts of genocide and other crimes committed overseas that benefit corporate business interests?
