Were it not a mat­ter of life and death, it would be amus­ing to watch the Supreme Court con­tort itself – and the Con­sti­tu­tion – in slav­ish feal­ty to Cor­po­rate America.

On one side, a pack of lawyered-up marauders claim their rights as persons one day and deny their culpability the next. On the other side, living beings seek relief from the jackals.

In June, the Court’s Repub­li­can major­i­ty is expect­ed to rule that, under inter­na­tion­al law, cor­po­ra­tions are not peo­ple. And as such they can­not be held respon­si­ble for their com­plic­i­ty in the gross abuse of human rights.

On Feb­ru­ary 28, the Court heard argu­ments in Kio­bel v. Roy­al Dutch Petro­le­um. The case is brought by 12 Nige­ri­ans grant­ed polit­i­cal asy­lum in the Unit­ed States. All are Ogo­ni, an indige­nous peo­ple who live in the Niger Riv­er delta, where Shell dis­cov­ered oil in 1958.

In the ear­ly ​’90s, the Ogo­ni began protest­ing the envi­ron­men­tal dev­as­ta­tion of their lands at the hands of Shell. In response, Nigeria’s mil­i­tary jun­ta sent in troops and an esti­mat­ed 2,000 Ogo­ni were killed. Charles Wiwa, one of the 12 now suing Shell, says that after he led a demon­stra­tion in his town, sol­diers seized him and for two hours tor­tured him before a crowd of thou­sands. ​“They start­ed beat­ing me – horse­whip­ping me, club­bing me, [kick­ing me with their] boots,” he said in a deposition.

Shell main­tains it has no con­nec­tion to these atroc­i­ties. That’s hard to believe.

Secret State Depart­ment cables released by Wik­iLeaks reveal that in Octo­ber 2009, Ann Pickard, Shell’s vice pres­i­dent for sub-Saha­ran Africa, met with Robin Renee Sanders, U.S. Ambas­sador to Nige­ria. Sanders report­ed back to Wash­ing­ton: “[Pickard] said the [gov­ern­ment of Nige­ria] had for­got­ten that Shell had sec­ond­ed peo­ple to all the rel­e­vant min­istries and that Shell con­se­quent­ly had access to every­thing that was being done in those min­istries.” Sanders added that Pickard ​“may be con­cerned that … bad news about Shell’s Niger­ian oper­a­tions will leak out.”

Address­ing the court in Feb­ru­ary, Paul Hoff­man, the Nige­ri­ans’ U.S. attor­ney, and Edwin Kneedler, the Oba­ma administration’s deputy solic­i­tor gen­er­al, made the case that under the Alien Tort Statute cor­po­ra­tions can be sued for vio­lat­ing ​“the law of nations or a treaty of the Unit­ed States.” Thus, they said, Shell could be liable for crimes against human­i­ty for its com­plic­i­ty in the killing and tor­ture of Ogo­ni activists.

Attor­ney Kath­leen Sul­li­van – (just) fol­low­ing orders from Shell and backed up by friend-of-the-court briefs from BP, Cater­pil­lar, GE, Hon­ey­well and IBM – argued that under inter­na­tion­al human rights law, only indi­vid­u­als, not cor­po­ra­tions, can be charged with crimes against humanity.

So, as with Cit­i­zens Unit­ed, the lines are drawn. On one side, a pack of lawyered-up maraud­ers claim their rights as per­sons one day and deny their cul­pa­bil­i­ty the next. On the oth­er side, liv­ing beings seek relief from the jack­als that gorge upon the fruits of human labor and gob­ble up the rich­es of the earth.

Through­out the Kio­bel appeals process Repub­li­can fed­er­al judges have defend­ed Shell, and Demo­c­ra­t­ic fed­er­al judges (plus one Repub­li­can) have main­tained that cor­po­ra­tions can be held liable for crimes against human­i­ty. This should give pause to those of us who would aban­don old-fash­ioned elec­toral pol­i­tics in cyn­i­cism or despair. The com­po­si­tion of the fed­er­al bench, like the com­po­si­tion of our leg­is­la­tures, mat­ters. It mat­ters to peo­ple like Charles Wiwa, and all of the oth­er Ogo­ni who have suf­fered because they threat­ened Shell’s bot­tom line.