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'Corporations Are People' Is Built on a 19th-Century Lie

13 points by colinprince 9y ago

vadimberman 9y ago
> Somewhat unintuitively, American corporations today enjoy many of the same rights as American citizens. Both, for instance, are entitled to the freedom of speech and the freedom of religion. I keep hearing that but what does it even mean? Corporations don't have religious beliefs, people do. Can the corporation be Muslim and have 100% Mormon employees? The only controversial bit I could locate in a different source was the corporate political spending: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood - but there is a bajillion plus loopholes to do that without the need to resort to legal fiction.
- trisimix 9y ago
  Yeah companies can internally praise certain religions over others. They can’t discriminate but they do anyways.
  - vadimberman 9y ago
    It's not the companies, it's their owners. The simple test is, if the company management changes to someone of a different faith, will they praise the same religious belief? The answer is clearly no, as no one in their right mind puts religion in the articles of incorporation, probably not even in Pakistan or Saudi Arabia.
  - zentiggr 9y ago
    Heck, if the US Army can get away with it, who's to stop private OR public corporations?
- rskar 9y ago
  Examples of corporations expressing religious beliefs: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2014/03/24/heres-what-you-need-to-know-about-the-hobby-lobby-case https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2014/03/24/he... Per above: "Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties' argument for not providing emergency contraception and IUD coverage to their employees can be boiled down to this: Because of the religious nature of our companies, we are entitled to religious freedom exemption from the Affordable Care Act's mandate because of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act — the same exemption that has been afforded to nonprofits with a religious nature." Granted, it's the people who run (and presumably own) these corporations that truly have religious beliefs. Even so, from a legal standpoint, it's the corporations that bring suit.
  - vadimberman 9y ago
    This is a very interesting case, thanks. Not sure why a crafts store must provide contraception (I read a few times to make sure I got it right), and IMO they are just grasping at legal straws to fight off a ridiculous suit. But, like you say, it's the people who run these corporations. Were I the judge, I'd be looking into the articles of incorporation which, I'm sure, say nothing about religion.
- Digory 9y ago
  I think you're confusing Friedman-esque theory of large corporation ethics (in large firms, management should/must only maximize shareholder value) with the law of corporations. Your local mosque is likely a corporation; at least some aspects of Mormon churches are incorporated too. People in a group can share religious beliefs, and engage in religious conduct together, under the legal idea of a corporation -- the group activity is separate from their personal activity, for legal purposes. And, unless the state meets a very high bar, we don't let government dangle corporate status for giving up your other constitutional rights. That's been true for most of the past century, even for profit-motivated associations.
Digory 9y ago
The Atlantic should be ashamed of this headline. Winkler's essay in the Saturday WSJ on this same topic says this: "Corporate personhood is a foundational principle of business law. In 1757, Blackstone in his influential 'Commentaries on the Law of England' wrote that corporations were 'artificial persons.' Open any corporate law casebook and one of the first lessons will be that corporations are legal persons." [0] So, "Corporations are People" isn't a new idea, is much older than the 19th Century, and Winkler himself says otherwise. [0]https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-rights-should-corporations-have-1519919444 https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-rights-should-corporations...
- woodandsteel 9y ago
  No, the point of calling them "artificial persons" is that they lack many of the rights, such as freedom of speech, that real persons have. It also means they cannot, like real persons, be sent to jail.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  Legal corporate personhood is exactly the original differentiating factor of the corporate form vs. other business structures (which basically consisted of sole proprietorships and general partnerships at the time, most other forms are newer inventions than the corporation.) That said, Constitutional corporate personhood is a distinct thing; it is quite possible for legal corporate personhood to be observed without the protections granted to “the people” or “persons” in the Constitution being extended to private corporations (they generally are not extended to juridical/artificial persons which are not private corporations, such as public bodies, despite those bodies also being legal persons.) The contentious issue about “corporate personhood” is about Constitutional, rather than juridical, corporate personhood. So while you (and the WSJ article you cite) are correct about legal corporate personhood, that's also a bit of a non-sequitur and equivocation in the discussion at hand. (Though it would help if articles like the Atlantic one would expressly identify Constitutional personhood as the issue and contrast it with juridical personhood, so as to clarify the problem domain and forestall this kind of distraction.)

13 points by colinprince 9y ago

> Somewhat unintuitively, American corporations today enjoy many of the same rights as American citizens. Both, for instance, are entitled to the freedom of speech and the freedom of religion. I keep hearing that but what does it even mean? Corporations don't have religious beliefs, people do. Can the corporation be Muslim and have 100% Mormon employees? The only controversial bit I could locate in a different source was the corporate political spending: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood - but there is a bajillion plus loopholes to do that without the need to resort to legal fiction.

trisimix 9y ago
Yeah companies can internally praise certain religions over others. They can’t discriminate but they do anyways.
- vadimberman 9y ago
  It's not the companies, it's their owners. The simple test is, if the company management changes to someone of a different faith, will they praise the same religious belief? The answer is clearly no, as no one in their right mind puts religion in the articles of incorporation, probably not even in Pakistan or Saudi Arabia.
- zentiggr 9y ago
  Heck, if the US Army can get away with it, who's to stop private OR public corporations?
rskar 9y ago
Examples of corporations expressing religious beliefs: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2014/03/24/heres-what-you-need-to-know-about-the-hobby-lobby-case https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2014/03/24/he... Per above: "Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties' argument for not providing emergency contraception and IUD coverage to their employees can be boiled down to this: Because of the religious nature of our companies, we are entitled to religious freedom exemption from the Affordable Care Act's mandate because of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act — the same exemption that has been afforded to nonprofits with a religious nature." Granted, it's the people who run (and presumably own) these corporations that truly have religious beliefs. Even so, from a legal standpoint, it's the corporations that bring suit.
- vadimberman 9y ago
  This is a very interesting case, thanks. Not sure why a crafts store must provide contraception (I read a few times to make sure I got it right), and IMO they are just grasping at legal straws to fight off a ridiculous suit. But, like you say, it's the people who run these corporations. Were I the judge, I'd be looking into the articles of incorporation which, I'm sure, say nothing about religion.
Digory 9y ago
I think you're confusing Friedman-esque theory of large corporation ethics (in large firms, management should/must only maximize shareholder value) with the law of corporations. Your local mosque is likely a corporation; at least some aspects of Mormon churches are incorporated too. People in a group can share religious beliefs, and engage in religious conduct together, under the legal idea of a corporation -- the group activity is separate from their personal activity, for legal purposes. And, unless the state meets a very high bar, we don't let government dangle corporate status for giving up your other constitutional rights. That's been true for most of the past century, even for profit-motivated associations.

Digory 9y ago

The Atlantic should be ashamed of this headline. Winkler's essay in the Saturday WSJ on this same topic says this: "Corporate personhood is a foundational principle of business law. In 1757, Blackstone in his influential 'Commentaries on the Law of England' wrote that corporations were 'artificial persons.' Open any corporate law casebook and one of the first lessons will be that corporations are legal persons." [0] So, "Corporations are People" isn't a new idea, is much older than the 19th Century, and Winkler himself says otherwise. [0]https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-rights-should-corporations-have-1519919444 https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-rights-should-corporations...

woodandsteel 9y ago
No, the point of calling them "artificial persons" is that they lack many of the rights, such as freedom of speech, that real persons have. It also means they cannot, like real persons, be sent to jail.
dragonwriter 9y ago
Legal corporate personhood is exactly the original differentiating factor of the corporate form vs. other business structures (which basically consisted of sole proprietorships and general partnerships at the time, most other forms are newer inventions than the corporation.) That said, Constitutional corporate personhood is a distinct thing; it is quite possible for legal corporate personhood to be observed without the protections granted to “the people” or “persons” in the Constitution being extended to private corporations (they generally are not extended to juridical/artificial persons which are not private corporations, such as public bodies, despite those bodies also being legal persons.) The contentious issue about “corporate personhood” is about Constitutional, rather than juridical, corporate personhood. So while you (and the WSJ article you cite) are correct about legal corporate personhood, that's also a bit of a non-sequitur and equivocation in the discussion at hand. (Though it would help if articles like the Atlantic one would expressly identify Constitutional personhood as the issue and contrast it with juridical personhood, so as to clarify the problem domain and forestall this kind of distraction.)