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Nike Denied First Amendment Defense
Several people have written in about an interesting decision handed down by the California Supreme Court. Nike, which has been repeatedly criticized for sweatshop practices in its contractors' factories, has made a variety of statements to the press contradicting these allegations (although in general, third-party examinations find them to be substantiated). A lawsuit was filed, charging the company with deceptive advertising under California law, and Nike was accused of trying to greenwash its image. Nike claimed that the First Amendment prevented it from being sued for these statements. The first courts to look at the case agreed with Nike; the California Supreme Court agreed with the plaintiffs and allowed the suit to proceed. (See also Nike's press release.) There are all sorts of interesting issues raised concerning corporate and commercial speech, the protection it has/ought to have, etc. There's a law.com article that goes a little more into the legal issues.
There are certain types of speech specifically exempted from First Amendment protection by the courts. Libel, slander, and corporate fraud are among these.
Between this and the SonicBlue court order, it seems pretty clear that if you are a plantiff move your case to California because the judges there don't give a rats a** about the constitution.
Maybe I'm misreading something but as far as I could tell from the articles linked, Nike got slapped down for issuing advertising which was untrue. Well, d'oh.
In Britain, at least, the Advertising Standards Authority exists to ensure, among other things, that advertisments are truthful: surely this is a basic requirement - otherwise we end up with "Smoke Ciggies - They're Good For You". I fail to see how the First Amendment should guarantee a corporation's right to lie to the public in its advertising - this seems to be even more of a perversion of First Amendment rights than most.
So, is there something I'm missing, or was Nike's case really "We can say what we like with no respect to truth because the First guarantees our right to lie to Joe Public"? If so, then they should have been slapped down, and hard.
Cheers
Jon
Any remember Jonah Peretti? He was the guy who tried to get Nike to print "sweatshop" on his new Nike ID sneakers. When they said no he tried to get: Sweat Shop, Child Labor, ChildLabor, Exploit and Swetshop.
s alon.com/people/cheapshots/2001/02/08/ artsfund/index2.html/ issues/0107/jockbeat.p hp
Nike respects the first amendment like Enron respects their employees.
pherris
Check out:
http://www.shey.net/niked.html
http://www.
http://www.villagevoice.com
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
No, the big tobacco companies have had all of them beat for a long time now. Their products directly kill people.
They've been trying for years to claim that there is no evidence that smoking causes diseases such as lung cancer, bringing in their own paid "scientists" into "debates" in an attempt to legitimize their "viewpoint". Now I suppose we're going to start hearing that they should be allowed to make such claims as a free speech issue.
I remember when internal documents of a tobacco company were brought up in court stating that their primary market to advertise to to get new recruits was the "13 to 25" age group. Their defence? "Its a typo". Riiight. (Studies have shown that if you haven't started smoking by age 20, you're pretty much never going to start smoking).
Philip Morris ("Phillip"?) recently published a report on the "indirect positive economic effects of early death". Thats sickening.
I wrote a paper on Nike's supply chain a few weeks ago for Sociology class. Nike doesn't employ sweatshop workers directly because they don't own the sweatshops. Instead they contract out manufacturing work to the owners who are usually wealthy Asian folks. So you could argue that Nike isn't responsible for the exploitation. But then again, Nike knows what goes on and they still give sweatshop owners their business.
Nike claims that it is doing sweatshop workers a service because the workers get paid a higher salary than they would get otherwise if they were working in farming. For the most part this is true. The $100/month that Indonesian workers get paid is more than the median national income. But they are producing thousands of pairs of shoes that each sell for about $100...
The commission doesn't have to determine truth. The advertiser does. If I say, "Swallow our cyanide capsules for continued long life", and there is a complaint from (presumably someone's partner, in this case :-), it is the ASA who ask the advertiser to prove their statement.
After the "proof", the agency simply decides whether the "proof" was compelling. If it was truly a proof, the advert is let to stand. If it is decided that the advert is wrong, it is removed, and there may be a punishment for breaking the standards....
The ASA are government-funded, but have removed party-political posters from in-power governments before now. They're maybe not perfect, but they're not the shady "them", as government bodies are typically depicted.
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
Are all of these so-called sweatshops real sweatshops; that is places with a prison like atmosphere? The left has a bad habit of calling a sweatshop any place where the worth of the labor is low, regardless of the workers being quite willing to earn this low wage.
You say your company and in the process confuse the issue a bit. A corporation, as indicated already in several posts, is and always has been a fictitious legal entity or device created by the public in order to aggregate capital for the purposes of commerce and to shield those that work for and invest in such an entity from direct liability. They were created and approved specifically by the individual states, and in quite a few cases dissolved because they were found to not uphold the public trust and purpose for which they were created. It was well understood that if corporations were to be given the same rights as individuals it would be at the expense of real individuals, since the capital that would be available to the corporation would allow it unparalleled access to public discourse (which we have seen to be the case in the 20th century).
Churches and universities were able to function just fine under the protections granted to individuals by the Bill of Rights and our Constitution prior to this ruling in 1886. The freedom of association is not threatened by the absence of individual rights being granted to a fictitious legal entity like a corporation.
The use of the word your to imply exclusive ownership is only applicable in the context of of an individual "doing business as a company". It doesn't even apply to individual shareholders of a corporation since in such a case one does not physically own anything other than a fictitious share of a fictitious entity granted "life" by the government. Individuals are and always have been free to conduct business as an individual in the US and therefore retain the rights and protections granted to an individual under our consitutional law. Our founding fathers made it quite clear that they believed the rights and protections granted in our Constitution and Bill of Rights to be God-given to natural persons. One of the main reasons for separating from English rule was the over-bearing nature of the royal charters (corporations) operating in the colonies at the time, and it was quite clear from the outset of the United States of America that corporations and charters were strictly regulated and prevented from abusing the public trust. It wasn't until almost a century later that the courts decided to tinker with things and declare that corporations were individuals as far as equal protection under the law was concerned.
Here, here. I prefer Converse tennis shoes ("Chuck Taylors")
which are also made in sweatshops in china now.
If anyone is interested in purchasing clothes that weren't made in sweatshops, you have to check out SweatX.net. Right now they're only selling bulk orders (i.e. 144 or more T-shirts with your logo on them) but they hope to sell to the general public soon.
They make all of their garments in Los Angeles, and their workers get paid a living wage, work in comfortable conditions, and have a say in how their company is run.
As far as sweatshop-free athletic shoes, the least of many evils appears to be New Balance - most of their labor is American, they don't spend any money on product endorsements, and they're committed to product quality. Note that they're privately held, not a publicly traded company, which helps to explain why they don't feel pressured to compromise their ideals in exchange for higher profits.
I'd love to hear about other examples of alternatives to sweatshops if anyone knows of them.