Despite (or maybe because of) the insane and dishonest reaction to Judge Sotomayor during her nomination process, i really wasn't really able to get a sense of how she would be as a Supreme Court Justice. I don't mean her competence; she was clearly qualified. But what kind of Justice would she be?

This statement, part of a question on the case that the Court is currently hearing, gives me a lot of hope:

Sotomayor:

Because what you are suggesting is that the courts who created corporations as persons, gave birth to corporations as persons, and there could be an argument made that that was the Court's error to start with, not Austin or McConnell, but the fact that the Court imbued a creature of State law with human characteristics.

The idea that corporations are 'persons' under the law and have all the protections that people have is just ridiculous, and there's no real basis for it. To hear a Supreme Court Justice come out and say that is really heartening.

But before you get too excited, it's expected that on this particular case, the right-wing Justices will be ruling in favor of allowing corporations to spend as much money as people in elections. Sotomayor replaced another liberal, so we still don't have enough power in the Court to act on Sotomayor's comment.