Constitutional rights for corporations
The following story has been reported on several leftist sources but not on any law-oriented weblogs as of yet:
On the evening of December 9, 2002, the elected municipal officials of Porter Township, Clarion County -- a municipality of 1,500 residents an hour north of Pittsburgh in Northwestern Pennsylvania -- became the first local government in the United States to eliminate corporate claims to civil and constitutional privileges. The Township adopted a binding law declaring that corporations operating in the Township may not wield legal privileges - historically used by corporations to override democratic decisionmaking -- to stop the Township from passing laws which protect residents from toxic sewage sludge.
Leftists are proclaiming this as a major victory. See this site, for example. Lawyers, even those who know little about constitutional issues, will readily recognize that there is no "binding law" involved, and that the authority of a township board to declare which constitutional rights a corporation does and does not have is precisely zero.
8:02:52 AM 
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