On Corporate Personhood

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(cross-posted from Vermont Watch, here)

One wonders whether, if corporations are considered persons under the laws of the land, should not then people likewise be considered corporations as well?

Being that such would be completely absurd of course, neither should corporations be considered persons, who are afforded all the rights that ought be reserved to actual persons alone, not corporate interests.

Ours is supposed to be government of the people, by the people, for the people, not government of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations.

Among the problems with corporations being granted rights of persons is they only want those rights and none of the responsibilities, obligations and duties that also go along with such or, at least only those they decide to pick and choose from, something which people do not have a choice about since one comes with the others.

When doing a search concerning a resolution currently before the state senate on the subject, I came across a good article (via Valley Advocate, here; Thursday, February 10, 2011; Northampton, Ma.):


Vermont: Corporations Aren’t People

Vermont lawmakers push back on High Court’s Citizens United ruling

By Tom Sturm

The wording of a new resolution brought to the Vermont State Legislature by state senator Virginia Lyons is stark and unambiguous: “The profits and institutional survival of large corporations are often in direct conflict with the essential needs and rights of human beings.” Corporations, the resolution continues, “have used their so-called rights to successfully seek the judicial reversal of democratically enacted laws,” leaving democratically elected governments “ineffective in protecting their citizens against corporate harm to the environment, health, workers, independent business, and local and regional economies.”

Lyons introduced the bill on the recent first anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s controversial Citizens United decision, which, through Byzantine interpretations of precedents that gave corporations “personhood” via the 14th Amendment, allowed them the same First Amendment rights as citizens are granted under the Constitution. President Obama somewhat boldly addressed members of the court at last year’s State of the Union Address, saying the decision would “open the floodgates for special interests-including foreign corporations-to spend without limit in our elections.”

Much of the controversy surrounds another facet of the ongoing argument-the notion that money is equivalent to speech, and that therefore no limits should be placed on expenditures for political advertising during federal election campaigns. Many argue that even well-organized groups of individuals cannot hope to compete with the vast amounts of aggregated cash that corporations can produce as needed, and that most individuals do not own their own newspapers, television stations or the other media networks that offer a greatly amplified voice to the political views of corporations that do.

[…]

Read the article in full, here.

Information on the resolution can be found, here.

In addition, on Saturday, March 5th at 2:00 PM, Senator Bernie Sanders will be hosting a Town Meeting to discuss the issue of corporations being afforded the status as “persons” under the constitution, here.

View town meeting poster, here.

6 thoughts on “On Corporate Personhood”

  2. Is that the court never decided the issue of corporate personhood.

    The original case “Santa Clara County vd Southern Pacific Railroad,” that “set” the supposed precedent, did not set the precedent. The court specifically did not address personhood, because it was not necessary to address personhood in order to settle the tax question that they were asked to adjudicate. The question was specifically excluded from the ruling.

    However, the court reporter who wrote up the decision, wrote into the “head notes” (a sort of digest of the case) an incorrect description that claimed the court had declared corporations to be persons for purposes of the 14th amendment.

    Lawyers and judges are supposed to read the full ruling when determining precedent. The head notes are just meant to provide a sort of index to help determine, quickly, whether or not the case is relevant. So precedents since 1886 are all based on an initial precedent that never existed.

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