The US Supreme Court: Our Surrogate King for 223 Years

Richard W. Behan

June 1, 2026

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Photo by Tim Mossholder

A king is a study in absolutes. His word is final, the law of the land, and he is accountable to no one, possibly excepting God.

Isn’t that a credible description of our Supreme Court? Its word is final, the law of the land, and its justices serve for life, unaccountable even to the presidents who appoint them.

Limitless in power, totally isolated, the Court can inflict great harm to the nation. It has for example eviscerated the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in two subsequent decisions, Shelby County v. Holder in 2013 and Louisiana v. Callais just this year. And now the former Confederate states are Jim-Crowing their black citizens all over again, kneecapping the impact of their votes. Discriminating against black voters in the South is once again, incontestably, the law of the land.

The Supreme Court can do such things by declaring laws or parts of laws to be unconstitutional and therefore invalid. The Court can do this because today it holds a power known as judicial review. It can tell the makers of laws—an elected Congress and an elected President—“You were wrong and we are right in saying so.”  How absolute is that?  Supreme Court justices were never elected, but they nullify laws emplaced by people who were. How anti-democratic is that?

This is not remotely what the Framers of the Constitution intended.

Article III Section 2 specifies what the Supreme Court can do. It functions all but exclusively with appellate jurisdiction. In street language that means the Court can do either of two things: it can uphold a lower court decision, or overturn it.  Nothing else. That’s it. The Court is empowered to sit in judgment of law cases. Nowhere is it empowered or even obliquely allowed to sit in judgment of the laws. The Constitution simply does not grant the Supreme Court the power of judicial review.

The Framers meant the Court to be subordinate.  In Federalist 78 Alexander Hamilton said this:

“The Judiciary is beyond comparison the weakest of the three departments of powers…it can never attack with success either of the other two [branches]…”

And in Federalist 81 he was explicit:

“…there is not a syllable in the plan under consideration [i.e. the Constitution] which directly empowers the national courts to construe the laws according to the spirit of the Constitution…”

 Today’s Supreme Court invalidates laws without a speck of Constitutional authority, and it has done so for 223 years.

That takes us back to 1803 and the infamous Supreme Court case of Marbury v. Madison.

Federalist President John Adams in the last days of his term appointed 16 new lower court judges—all of Federalist persuasion. Among them was one William Marbury. Their commissions were to be delivered by the Secretary of State, as specified in the Judiciary Act of 1789, but in the scurry of a departing Administration they were not. In March Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson was sworn in as President. Intending to appoint judges of his own party instead Jefferson ordered his Secretary of State James Madison not to deliver the commissions.  Marbury sued for his, citing the 1789 law. John Marshall’s Supreme Court found Madison guilty but—wait for it—also saw the Judiciary Act as slightly askew of the Constitution. It was the skinniest technicality, but on that basis the Court dismissed the case.

Chief Justice Marshall said in the Court’s written decision, “It is emphatically the duty of the Judicial Department to say what the law is…a law repugnant to the Constitution is void.” So said John Marshall, but nobody else, certainly not the writers of the Constitution.

Marshall’s Supreme Court claimed judicial review simply by fiat and vaulted from the weakest branch of federal governance eventually to kinglike supremecy.

Note where our Supreme Court is today: by neutering the Voting Rights Act (and, incidentally, encouraging gerrymandering) it is up to its enrobed necks in rigging the upcoming elections, the mid-terms and the general election in 2028.

Judicial review was initially benign. It wasn’t invoked again for 57 years, and might have remained tolerable had not the Court paired it with another irresponsible decision.

In the 1886 case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad the Supreme Court set a precedent with devastating consequences. It simply declared chartered corporations are persons as defined in the 14^th Amendment, with rights guaranteed by the Constitution: free speech, equal protection under the law, and others. By a technical error of the Court the precedent is legally flawed, but later Courts cited it anyway. And  now corporate personhood, prima facie preposterous, is the law of the land.

Think about corporate personhood for a moment. If corporations have Constitutional rights and if they can prove in court those rights are violated by a law, they can sue to have the law overturned. They can use judicial review as a weapon.

And after Santa Clara County they did.

The 14^th Amendment was meant to grant citizenship to black Americans, freed from enslavement by the Emancipation Proclamation, and to guarantee their equal treatment under the law. But now, after Santa Clara County, corporations became citizens, too.

377 cases based on the 14th Amendment were heard by the Supreme Court over the 27 years following Santa Clara County.  19 of them dealt with black Americans seeking equal protection. 288 were initiated by corporations claiming Constitutional rights—primarily to invalidate irksome laws.

As the centuries turned corporations succeeded in overturning minimum wage laws, child labor laws, laws limiting the workday, workmen’s compensation statutes, laws limiting corporate lobbying, and laws regulating utility companies. They sued for and won additional Constitutional rights, those granted by the 4th, and 5th Amendments—rights of privacy and the freedom from unreasonable search and seizure. Between 1905 and the mid-1930’s the Supreme Court found some 200 laws and regulations to be unconstitutional.

As the 20^th century progressed the toxicity grew. The caustic combination of judicial review and corporate personhood would prove in time to be fatal to democracy.       In a 1976 case, Buckley v. Valeo, the Supreme Court found unconstitutional the 1910 Corrupt Practices Act. It placed parsimonious limits on how much political candidates could spend on their campaigns. No, the Court said, spending money is a form of free speech, and the Congress cannot “abridge” that right. Dollars are words? Isn’t that also prima facie preposterous? Two years later in First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti the Court overturned the 1907 Tilman Act, prohibiting corporations from spending money on political campaigns—because corporations have free speech rights, too. In seeming contradiction a law limiting how much corporations could spend remained in place. (The law was FECA, the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1972.)

In 2010 Citizens United v. FEC removed the contradiction. If corporations could not be restrained at all from spending for political purposes, then how much they spent was immaterial. Section 441b of FECA was unconstitutional. Out with it. Corporations can spend as much as they please.

But not to worry, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority:

“…independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption…..The appearance of influence or access will not cause the electorate to lose faith in democracy.”   

Prima facie preposterous?

A tsunami of corporate money flooded expeditiously into the political campaigns of both parties (protected by the right of free speech) and lobbying activities as well (protected by the right of petition).

Corporations today outspend citizen interest groups in lobbying Congress and executive agencies by a factor of 86:1. In the 2024 election cycle corporations contributed 71% of the total of campaign donations, about $10.65 billion. Closely allied billionaires contributed another $2.85 billion, 19% of the total. Small individual donations came to $1.5 billion, about 10%.

By any measure, corporate citizens are the dominant influencers of federal governance today. Their financing of political campaigns renders elected officials into indentured servitude, amiably open to corporate requests. Then corporate lobbyists specify the details.

Public policy today routinely favors not the public interest, but the preferences of corporate America.

Oligarchs are commonly thought to be men and women of immense wealth with close ties to governments. We have those: Elon Musk gave $250 million to the Trump campaign in 2024. But the oligarchs dominating us today are corporate. It is not inaccurate to say our democracy was displaced by corporate oligarchy—after judicial review, after Santa Clara County, after Buckley, after Bellotti,after Citizens United. All thanks to a Supreme Court emulating royalty.

And then Donald Trump showed up, and overrode corporate oligarchy: Trump made himself a king.

The Supreme Court, the stand-in, stepped up to help. First the Court empowered Trump to ignore the rule of law: in Trump v. United States presidents became immune from prosecution for breaking laws while in office, if they do so in “official” actions. Then the Court fell into lockstep with the Republican Party, to tilt the elections of 2026 and 2028 to favor Donald Trump.

If Trump wins a third term, we will still have a king.

If he doesn’t, we’ll still have the stand-in.

This article is drawn from  a book the author is completing, The Triumph of Corporate Oligarchy: How It Defeated Democracy, Normalized Fraudulent Warfare, Devastated a Thriving Nation, and Brought Forth Donald Trump.

Richard W. Behan lives in Corvallis, Oregon. He can be reached at: richard.behan@icloud.com

LYSANDER SPOONER WOULD AGREE

Who Really Owns America? The Banks, The Billionaires, And The Deep State – OpEd

November 12, 2025 
By John and Nisha Whitehead

As President Trump floats the idea of 50-year mortgages, Americans are being sold a new version of the American Dream—one that can never truly be owned, only leased from the banks, billionaires, and private equity landlords who profit from our permanent state of debt.

Which begs the question: who owns America?

Is it the government? The politicians? The corporations? The foreign investors? The American people?

While the Deep State keeps the nation divided and distracted by circus politics—the bread and circuses of empire—the police state’s stranglehold on power ensures the continuation of endless wars, runaway spending, and disregard for the rule of law.

Meanwhile, America is literally being bought and sold right out from under us.

Consider the facts.

Homeownership—the cornerstone of middle-class stability—is being transformed into a lifetime rental agreement. Cars, homes, and even college degrees have become indentured commodities in a debt-driven economy where the average American family serves as collateral for Wall Street’s profits.

This is not accidental.

It’s the natural evolution of an economy built to enrich the few at the expense of the many.

The American Dream has been repackaged as a subscription service—an illusion of ownership propped up by 0% down payments, predatory interest rates, and fine print that lasts a lifetime.

What used to be called “buying” is now simply renting from the future.

We’re losing more and more of our land every year to corporations and foreign interests. As individual Americans struggle just to make rent, corporations and foreign investors are quietly buying the country piece by piece. Foreign ownership of U.S. agricultural land has surged to more than 43 million acres—millions added in just the last few years. Meanwhile, large institutional landlords and single-family rental operators have amassed hundreds of thousands of houses across the country. Corporations now hold vast portfolios, converting would-be first-time buyers into permanent tenants. The result is a nation where more of our soil and shelter are controlled by entities whose primary allegiance is to shareholders—not communities.

The same dynamic plays out across industries.

We’re losing more and more of our businesses every year to foreign corporations and interests.Brands that once defined American enterprise—U.S. Steel, Budweiser, Jeep and Chrysler, Burger King, 7-Eleven—now fly international flags. Chinese companies and investors are also buying up major food companies, commercial and residential real estate, and other businesses. Global conglomerates have bought up the names we grew up with: U.S. Steel (now Japanese-owned); General Electric (Chinese-owned); Budweiser (Belgium); Burger King (Canada); 7-Eleven (Japan); Jeep, Chrysler, and Dodge (Netherlands); and IBM(China). The American economy has become a franchise of the world’s oligarchs.

We’re digging ourselves deeper and deeper into debt, both as a nation and as a populace. Debt has become America’s most profitable export. Washington borrows trillions it cannot repay; Wall Street packages our futures into products it can sell; and households shoulder record balances. The national debt (the amount the federal government has borrowed over the years and must pay back) has surged to more than $38 trillion under President Trump, “the fastest accumulation of a trillion dollars in debt outside of the COVID-19 pandemic.” In a nutshell, the U.S. government is funding its existence with a credit card, spending money it doesn’t have on programs it can’t afford. In this economy, debt has replaced freedom as our national currency.

The Fourth Estate—the supposed watchdog of power—has largely merged with the corporate state. Independent news agencies, which were supposed to act as bulwarks against government propaganda, have been subsumed by a global corporate takeover of newspapers, television and radio. A handful of corporations now control most of the media industry and, thus, the information dished out to the public. Likewise, with Facebook and Google having appointed themselves the arbiters of disinformation, we now find ourselves grappling with new levels of corporate censorship by entities with a history of colluding with the government to keep the citizenry mindless, muzzled and in the dark.

Most critically of all, however, the U.S. government, long ago sold to the highest bidders, now operates as a shell company for corporate interests. Nowhere is this state of affairs more evident than in the manufactured spectacle that is politics. Elections change the faces, not the system. Members of Congress do far more listening to donors than to citizens, so much so that they spend two-thirds of their time in office raising money. As Reuters reports, “It also means that lawmakers often spend more time listening to the concerns of the wealthy than anyone else.”

In the oligarchy that is the American police state, it clearly doesn’t matter who wins the White House, if they all answer to the same corporate shareholders.

So much for living the American dream.

“We the people” have become the new, permanent underclass in America.

We’re being forced to shell out money for endless wars that are bleeding us dry; money for surveillance systems to track our movements; money to further militarize our already militarized police; money to allow the government to raid our homes and bank accounts; money to fund schools where our kids learn nothing about freedom and everything about how to comply; and on and on.

This is no way of life.

It’s tempting to say that there’s little we can do about it, except that’s not quite accurate.

There are a few things we can do—demand transparency, reject cronyism and graft, insist on fair pricing and honest accounting methods, call a halt to incentive-driven government programs that prioritize profits over people—but it will require that “we the people” stop playing politics and stand united against the politicians and corporate interests who have turned our government and economy into a pay-to-play exercise in fascism.

Unfortunately, we’ve become so invested in identity politics that label us based on our political leanings that we’ve lost sight of the one label that unites us: we’re all Americans.

The powers-that-be want us to adopt an “us versus them” mindset that keeps us powerless and divided. Yet as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the only “us versus them” that matters is “we the people” against the Deep State.

The American Dream was meant to promise opportunity, not indentured servitude.

Yet in the American Police State, freedom itself is on loan—with interest.

We can keep renting our lives from the powerful few who profit from our compliance, or we can reclaim true ownership—of our persons, our labor, our government, and our future.

For as long as we still have one, the choice is ours.

John and Nisha Whitehead

John W. Whitehead is an attorney and author who has written, debated and practiced widely in the area of constitutional law, human rights and popular culture. He is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. Whitehead can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org.

 

Volkswagen's dark Brazilian chapter ends in $30mn court ruling

The cattle ranch scandal forms part of a broader pattern of Volkswagen's collaboration with Brazil's military regime, which ruled from 1964 to 1985.

 / bne IntelliNews

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By bnl editorial staff September 2, 2025

Volkswagen's Brazilian subsidiary has been ordered to pay BRL165mn ($30mn) in what marks the largest compensation award of its kind in Brazil, after a labour court found the German carmaker guilty of subjecting hundreds of workers to conditions "analogous to slavery" at an Amazon cattle ranch during the 1970s and 1980s.

The August 29 ruling by a Pará state labour court breaks new ground in Brazil's reckoning with corporate abuses during its military dictatorship era, when multinational companies partnered with the authoritarian regime to develop the Amazon region.

Volkswagen do Brasil announced it would appeal against the decision, maintaining that it "consistently upholds the principles of human dignity and strictly complies with all applicable labour laws and regulations," as reported by AFP. The Wolfsburg-based company, which has operated in Brazil for 72 years, said it would "continue its defence in pursuit of justice and legal certainty before higher courts."

According to the Washington Post, Judge Otávio Bruno da Silva Ferreira determined that workers at the Santana do Araguaia ranch had been subjected to "debt labour, violence and submitted to degrading conditions" that met "the definition of contemporary slave labour." Beyond the financial penalty, the court mandated that Volkswagen issue a formal apology and publicly acknowledge the abuses.

“Slavery is a ‘present past,’ because its marks remain in Brazilian society, especially in labour relations,” Ferreira stated.

The case sheds light on a largely forgotten chapter of Brazilian economic history. The Volkswagen ranch, acquired in the mid-1970s as part of a government scheme to encourage Amazon settlement, became a site of systematic exploitation. Workers were recruited through labour contractors known as "gatos," who lured impoverished labourers from rural towns with false promises of high wages.

"If anyone tried to escape, the guards went after them and shot them," José Pereira, a former worker, told German broadcaster ARD in 2022, describing the armed surveillance that enforced the debt bondage system.

The compensation will not go directly to victims but rather to a Pará state fund dedicated to promoting dignified working conditions and eradicating slave labour. This decision has disappointed some survivors, though they expressed relief at the formal recognition of their suffering.

Long road to justice

The case owes much to the persistence of Ricardo Rezende Figueira, a Catholic priest who spent decades documenting the abuses, the Washington Post reported. Now 73 and a human rights professor in Rio de Janeiro, Rezende first investigated the ranch in the early 1980s, gathering testimonies from dozens of labourers who had escaped.

His 1983 public denunciation — "Priest says there are slaves on Volks farm," as the Correio Braziliense newspaper reported — triggered multiple official investigations that confirmed forced labour conditions. Yet no action was taken for decades.

The breakthrough came in 2019 when Rezende, observing that Volkswagen Brazil had acknowledged political persecution of factory workers during the dictatorship, submitted his 1,000-page dossier to federal prosecutors. The documentation identified 69 alleged victims, backing up their cases with notarised declarations, police statements and parliamentary reports.

Corporate complicity under dictatorship

The cattle ranch scandal forms part of a broader pattern of Volkswagen's collaboration with Brazil's military regime, which ruled from 1964 to 1985. Christopher Kopper, a historian at Germany's Bielefeld University commissioned by Volkswagen to investigate its Brazilian operations during the dictatorship, uncovered systematic cooperation with security forces.

"VW worked closely with the dictatorship's security apparatus," Kopper told DW, noting that this extended beyond the ranch to the company's main factories. "Correspondence with the board of directors in Wolfsburg documents full acceptance of the military dictatorship up until 1979."

The parallels with Volkswagen's notorious origins in Nazi Germany, where the company systematically exploited forced labour, have not gone unnoticed. Kopper noted that many VW managers in Brazil during the 1950s and 1960s "had been army officers and Nazi party members" in their youth.

The Fazenda Volkswagen itself was established in 1974 under Swiss agricultural economist Friedrich-Georg Brugger. Whilst directly employed VW workers enjoyed proper housing, schools and medical facilities, subcontracted labourers faced vastly different conditions.

"They worked under conditions akin to indentured servitude," Kopper explained, adding that management consistently deflected responsibility by claiming they were not accountable for subcontractors' treatment of workers.

The long shadow of corporate accountability

Federal prosecutors hailed the ruling as potentially transformative for corporate accountability in Brazil, where the crime of "reducing someone to conditions analogous to slavery" carries no statute of limitations.

"It is without doubt a historic mark," said Ulisses Dias de Carvalho, a federal prosecutor on the case, as quoted by the Washington Post. "This sentence will serve as an example for the next cases and open up the opportunity to hold other companies to account."

Rafael Garcia, who leads the Brazilian Labour Ministry's slave labour division, called it a "historic" decision for a nation that has never fully confronted the human suffering inflicted during Amazon development. "This conviction is for the country. It is a day to celebrate the struggle for human rights."

Volkswagen's ambitious expansion plans in Brazil — recently revised upward to BRL16bn ($2.9bn) by 2028 — are now tarnished by the shadow of this ruling. The company, which opened Latin America's first VW production facility outside Germany in São Paulo in the 1950s, has positioned itself as a modernising force in Brazilian industry.

Yet as Brazil continues to grapple with its authoritarian past, the scandal demonstrates that corporate complicity in historical abuses remains a live issue, one that carries both reputational and financial consequences decades after the fact.