<Do you really imagine these judges as people who cringe at the idea of the world being a better place?>

No, but I think they intellectually separated their interests in humanity from their legal analysis, to the detriment of all. I mean, at one level, that's what they're *supposed* to do -- this is why justice is represented as "blind"--judges are supposed to apply law to facts without regard for the implications thereof. But I would argue that it is also inappropriate to undertake legal analysis without regard for human impact or long-term consequences. Whatever you or I think about it, these issues WERE resolved in a vaccuum, and I belive that was inappropriate. Actually, to the extent that the judges did bring their personal views to bear, it was probably to react negatively to Henry Ford's conduct on the witness stand. He spent hours waxing eloquent about social equality and his role in bringing justice to all. The judges, a bunch of hard-line victorian-era types, were reputed to have not been amused at all.

There is a saying that "bad facts make bad law." That seems to have been the case here. Ford probably could have gotten away with what he wanted to do if he had been less platitudinous about it. But he wasn't, and so the justices felt the need to stomp his argument and grind it underfoot, lest there be any mistake. The consequence--no legitimate raison d'etrs for a publicly held U.S. corporation other than profit making. The U.S. citizenry loses.

Just to reinforce this point, there is a movie coming out soon called, I think, "The Corporation." In it, the film maker approached several psychologists, sociologists, and other social scientists with the question "if a corporation is a person, legally, what kind of person is it?" The answer -- a sociopath. In anthropomorphizing the corporate entity they discovered that it acts without morals, and without regret. If it was a real person, it would be considered very dangerous and would probably be institutionalized or incarcerated. Moreover, the corporate sociopath drives its amoral behavior down and through its otherwise moral, thinking human employees. They did a series of expiriments, for the movie, that looked at what people would do inside and outside of work. It turns out that people will do things at work, for work, that they would never do in their own lives. So the corporate person is not only a bad person in and of itself, it also has a corrupting influence on the people around it. I think this state of affairs is somewhat attributable, ultimately, to the Ford v. Dodge decision.

sidenote--the decision wasn't about breach of contract. It was a shareholder derivative suit relating to fiduciary duty. Basically, officers and directors of a company have fiduciary obligations to their shareholders, which means (as established in that case), that maximizing profit and return to the shareholders is the only legitimate activity of the officers and directors, so long as they comply with the law. So, in fact, the court really did say that corporations have no business making the world a better place. They exist to serve Mammon, and for no other reason. My whole point is, I don't like that result and I'm not comfortable with it. I'd rather live in a world where every decision is made with regard to its impact on the seventh generation from now. And until we, as a society, start to think that way and institutionalize such thinking, we're just going to continue down the non-sustainable, dehumanizing road we've been on since the Industrial Revolution. I think we can do better, that's all.