NewSouth author Steve Suitts recently contributed an op-editorial to the Daily Report, Fulton County Georgia’s leading source for legal news and information. In the editorial, Suitts, author of Hugo Black of Alabama: How His Roots and Early Career Shaped the Great Champion of the Constitution, discusses the historical context of a recent Supreme Court ruling which struck down congressional limits on corporate campaign contributions.

Suitts also discusses Hugo Black’s role as the only Supreme Court justice to previously address the constitutionality of treating corporations as persons, an opinion he provided twice during his time on the bench.

From the article:

Black’s opinions recall a fascinating story of how corporations became persons under our Constitution virtually by default and gained expanded federal constitutional protections far earlier than people whose skin color denied them the rights of personhood …

His dissents also raise an intriguing question as to whether the current court can honestly find the legal authority and precedent to apply its recent ruling against Congress to the states through the 14th Amendment …

Steve Suitts is the founder of the Civil Liberties Union of Alabama, the vice president of the Southern Education Foundation in Atlanta, and an adjunct lecturer at Emory University’s Institute of Liberal Arts. Hugo Black of Alabama is Suitts’s definitive study of Supreme Court justice Hugo Black’s origins and influences and offers fresh insights into the justice’s character, thought processes, and instincts.

Hugo Black of Alabama is available directly from NewSouth Books, Amazon.com, or your favorite online or local retailer.

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