Donahue and his organization and the National Chamber Litigation Center were crowing with ill-concealed glee, the ruling in Stoneridge LLC v Scientific-Atlanta that just came down. Another victory for the corporate defense bar and probably the last nail in the coffin for “scheme liability”.

This follows the Tellabs and Dura decisions in our current Court’s extreme solicitude for the expunging of shareholder lawsuits in general.

Thank you. Thank you, for bringing Donahue’s outrageous remarks to our attention. I was aware of them earlier through other sources, but so far no thread topic has offered a vehicle to bring them up…

Sometime it seems to me that almost all the issues brought up here and at other sites on the web play out against the backdrop of the longterm historical struggle between national governments and the “economic sector”. It seems as if the latter is in the ascendency….precisely because it has the means and delivery mechanisms of effecting the democratic process especially when it applies to the judiciary.

Donahue’s organization has been campaigning against judges for years that they deem insufficiently friendly to Business. Since they have ample funds, they have enjoyed a tremendous success rate in their campaigns. Now they are targeting state AG races as well. So, all of our talk about constitutional issues must play out against the backdrop of a judiciary and legal system increasingly solicitous of business interests…back to substantive due process a la Lochner I am afraid.

This case takes the presumption upon which the law seems to be based and turns it on its ear. In previous cases the concern was that the offender would incite violence against the victim group – holocaust deniers fomenting anti-Semitic actions for instance. I think here the fear is that the violence will come reactively FROM the ‘victim’ group – ie. Islamic extremists. I doubt that the law anticipated this twist.

Drifting from the immediate topic, I think free speech concerns in the U.S. have been turned on their ear by the systemic incursion into the political arena by big business. This is exacerbated by the odious concepts of Corporate Personhood on the one hand and the extension of First Amendment rights to commercial entities.

Consider recent statements from U.S. Chamber of Commerce president Tom Donahue. Announcing an unprecedented amount of money to be spent in the upcoming election he refers to his constituency of multinationals as a ‘grass roots movement.’ This is not We The People, people.
My Blog Reaction

I dislike it as it seems facially counter to both the words and intent of the free speech clause.

I admit to being an admirer and follower of Justice Hugo Black’s absolutism here. “‘No law’ means no law.”

Life is easy as a Blackian absolutist: we don’t have to worry about balancing tests, community standards, fighting words doctrine, or any of the other of it.

Saying certain words or speaking to certain topics in airport security gate lines has also been forbidden and this ban too is facially unconstitutional in my opinion. Not that my opinion carries much weight!