Thrown Out of Court: How corporations became people you can't sue
This is a rather long article but it's worth checking out when you get a chance. Some of this stuff I didn't even know about and the implications are kind of unsettling. Money is a form of free speech and corporations are not only people they're quickly becoming first class citizens above everyone else.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/mag...ourt050661.php
The greatest damage here isn’t to us as individuals. “Mandatory arbitration is a basic threat to our democracy,” says Deepak Gupta, who argued the 2011 AT&T case before the Supreme Court. “This isn’t about us all getting our $30 checks when a company has ripped us off. It’s about laws that Congress passes being enforceable. The Supreme Court is allowing corporations to overturn law made by people we elect.”
Diverting all cases to arbitration also promotes a culture of impunity, enabling wrongdoers to more easily continue their wrongdoing. And when the threat of litigation is strong, it discourages corporations from engaging in misconduct in the first place. By contrast, says Ed Mierzwinski, consumer program director at the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, “[t]he use of forced arbitration clauses has essentially immunized corporate America from any responsibility for its actions.” In the same way that the Justice Department’s decision to fine banks rather than prosecute executives encourages financial institutions to build in penalties as a cost of business, arbitration incentivizes companies to write down settlement awards as a routine cost, while perpetuating harms at large
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Originally Posted by Warriorbird
