Let's not leave Exxon Valdez out of the corporate Supreme Court mess

The way it was explained in high school history class, the reason the authors of American democracy gave Supreme Court justices lifetime terms was to encourage objectivity on the court. Appointees for life no longer had to follow affiliations they may have made to get to the bench as they had a lucrative job for the rest of their lives with no political repercussions.

Then came the issue of activist judges.  Remember those accusations when President Obama began making his appointments to various federal courts? The concern should have been about those judges already appointed by Republicans to the Supreme Court.

Now we have a court that is slowly dismantling the democracy in favor of corporations and the rich. This is not what James Madison and the other authors of the Constitution had in mind.

The court's Citizens United decision ruled corporations were people as far as political contributions are concerned with no accounting and no identification. More recently the Hobby Lobby decision not only gave more power to corporations but also violated the separation of church and state doctrine by allowing companies to refuse certain health insurance coverages based on religious beliefs.

But long before that, in 2008, the corporate court ruled in favor of Exxon, cutting punitive damages for spilling oil all over Alaska's Prince William Sound from $2.4 billion to $500 million, less than one fourth of the original settlement. That should have been a signal of what was to come. Slap down the individual citizen, as in Alaska fishing families, in favor of the largest corporation in the world. It was the answer she should have given when Katy Couric asked Sarah Palin, then governor of Alaska, if there was a Supreme Court decision she disagreed with.

In the future as resistance grows to this attempted corporate takeover of the American judicial system and as follows, the government, let's include Exxon Valdez in the argument right along with Hobby Lobby and Citizens United as evidence.  It's only fair, except fair, let alone justice, doesn't seem to count with this court.