“ The 14th Amendment was passed at the end of the Civil War to give equal rights to black people, and therefore it said no state can deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of the law and that was intended to prevent the states from taking life, liberty or property away from black people, as they had done for so much of our history. What happened was corporations would come into court, and corporation lawyers are very clever and would say you cannot deprive a person of life, liberty, or property, we are a person, a corporation is a person. The Supreme Court goes along with that. What is particularly grotesque about this was the 14th Amendment was passed to protect newly freed slaves. Between 1890 and 1910 there were 307 cases brought before the court under the 14th Amendment, 288 of these brought by corporations, 19 by African Americans.
— Richard Grossman (via soupsoup)
