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Normally I agree about judges' disdain for cute tricks. However, judges already accept corps having legal entity status, which is the hard part of this idea.

Normally I agree about judges' disdain for cute tricks. However, judges already accept corps having legal entity status, which is the hard part of this idea. If this was used to try and shelter a human identity then a judge might pierce that, but if there is just a company that has bought up all of its shares (or controlling shares), then there is no particular shielding involved. We already see corps today preventing individual liability...many corps committed fraud (?) in their risk assessments (at a minimum) leading to the Great Recession, but I'm unaware of any human going to jail, and if any human was convicted of anything it was relatively trivial. Instead what happened was some corporate ownership traded hands. As soon as/if remote-work-via-contract becomes a thing at the higher levels, it is easy to think of a company having human workers, but lacking actual humans at the top. That doesn't mean skynet...but it does mean no human for the judge to unveil. Just a corporation represented by human lawyers. We probably wouldn't even notice in most cases.

Gargoyle 9y ago
But the basis of decisions like Citizens United is that corporations have rights (free speech and so on) because they're just collections of people, who have those rights as individuals. The key idea behind CU is that people don't give up those rights just because they formed a corporation. In other words, the rights of corporations are really just the rights of the people in them. If there are no people in them, I could very easily see a judge deciding the corporation itself has no rights.
- ergothus 9y ago
  > If there are no people in them, I could very easily see a judge deciding the corporation itself has no rights I might quibble with "very easily", but I don't argue your core point. I can, however, ALSO see a judge ruling that any corporation that employs humans retains rights in the name of the interests of those humans. Not a guarantee, possibly even a stretch, but believable (And CU did NOT say "the humans of a corp are not limited in their free speech outside of the corp, therefore the actions of the corp can be limited without similarly restricting the rights of those humans", so I'll stick by my 'corps have legal entity status beyond their humans' suspicions, particularly given how long corps have had legal status in multiple countries before CU was even a concept. Regardless of right/wrong, if a reasonable case can be made either way, then there's a good reason to not have full confidence that self-owning corporations would be tossed out of court, which was my point.
bmelton 9y ago
> However, judges already accept corps having legal entity status To be fair, that isn't a trick. That's been the established legal norm since 1886. Corporations are people for a variety of reasons, including (as Gargoyle mentions) because they're just collections of people, but also because without at least some forms of personhood, we wouldn't be able to sue corporations who deliberately or negligently violate the law and harm their customers (or neighbors, et al.) Because of personhood, a corporation has _liability_, beyond just the usual chicanery.
- ergothus 9y ago
  > Because of personhood, a corporation has _liability_, beyond just the usual chicanery. I wasn't denying that a self-owned corporation could be held liable, I was arguing that we can't count on a judge tossing out the concept of a self-owned corporation. (It's possible, maybe even probable, though I doubt it, but not basically guaranteed).
  - bmelton 9y ago
    Understood. My point wasn't that a self-owned corporation would have liability, I was arguing that corporate personhood isn't a good example of legal trickery, since not only is that opinion pretty exclusive to non-law people, but it's totally been that way for the entire lives of every sitting judge.

Gargoyle 9y ago

But the basis of decisions like Citizens United is that corporations have rights (free speech and so on) because they're just collections of people, who have those rights as individuals. The key idea behind CU is that people don't give up those rights just because they formed a corporation. In other words, the rights of corporations are really just the rights of the people in them. If there are no people in them, I could very easily see a judge deciding the corporation itself has no rights.

ergothus 9y ago
> If there are no people in them, I could very easily see a judge deciding the corporation itself has no rights I might quibble with "very easily", but I don't argue your core point. I can, however, ALSO see a judge ruling that any corporation that employs humans retains rights in the name of the interests of those humans. Not a guarantee, possibly even a stretch, but believable (And CU did NOT say "the humans of a corp are not limited in their free speech outside of the corp, therefore the actions of the corp can be limited without similarly restricting the rights of those humans", so I'll stick by my 'corps have legal entity status beyond their humans' suspicions, particularly given how long corps have had legal status in multiple countries before CU was even a concept. Regardless of right/wrong, if a reasonable case can be made either way, then there's a good reason to not have full confidence that self-owning corporations would be tossed out of court, which was my point.

bmelton 9y ago

> However, judges already accept corps having legal entity status To be fair, that isn't a trick. That's been the established legal norm since 1886. Corporations are people for a variety of reasons, including (as Gargoyle mentions) because they're just collections of people, but also because without at least some forms of personhood, we wouldn't be able to sue corporations who deliberately or negligently violate the law and harm their customers (or neighbors, et al.) Because of personhood, a corporation has _liability_, beyond just the usual chicanery.

ergothus 9y ago
> Because of personhood, a corporation has _liability_, beyond just the usual chicanery. I wasn't denying that a self-owned corporation could be held liable, I was arguing that we can't count on a judge tossing out the concept of a self-owned corporation. (It's possible, maybe even probable, though I doubt it, but not basically guaranteed).
- bmelton 9y ago
  Understood. My point wasn't that a self-owned corporation would have liability, I was arguing that corporate personhood isn't a good example of legal trickery, since not only is that opinion pretty exclusive to non-law people, but it's totally been that way for the entire lives of every sitting judge.