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We managed to avoid silly things like this while making corporations "legal people." I see no reason that legal theorists should be selectively incompetent here

We managed to avoid silly things like this while making corporations "legal people." I see no reason that legal theorists should be selectively incompetent here. Don't get caught up on the word "river," which is just a specific example. The general case is "ecosystem."

kazoolist 8y ago
The concept behind corporations as "people" is that people don't lose rights just because they are engaging in their right of free association. The corporate entity only "has rights" because it is a collection of people, and those people have rights. Ecosystems aren't collections of people.
- schiffern 8y ago
  >Ecosystems aren't collections of people. Is the implication here that "only people have rights," therefore ecosystems shouldn't? Correct me if mistaken. To clarify, I wasn't arguing that ecosystems have rights because corporations do. This is indeed the status quo, but it's hardly immutable. Consider that 200 years ago neither women nor slaves were considered legal persons. Restating the status quo isn't an argument in its favor.
rayiner 8y ago
Corporations are legal entities composed of people, so it makes sense to treat that the aggregate would have similar rights as the individual. When we say a corporation has the right to free speech, we mean that you cannot restrict the right of people just because they’re acting together through a corporation. Rivers, of course, are not people nor are they composed of people. Nor are ecosystems. People might be affected by, for example, what happens to a river. All of this legal wrangling over river personhood is an attempt to avoid having to show that effect.
- pfdietz 8y ago
  Corporations are a weird kind of person, in that it's perfectly legal to murder them and sell their parts.
- schiffern 8y ago
  > Nor are ecosystems [composed of people]. Isn't that definition exactly the problem? An ecologist would disagree of course, but how curious that every other species is considered part of the ecosystem, but we are not! We're subject to all the same ecological laws. The humanity vs. nature separateness is of course entirely invented. But it's built into our very language: consider the other-ing effect of the term "environment" for instance. > All of this legal wrangling over river personhood is an attempt to avoid having to show that effect. You have it flipped around. The legal wrangling is almost entirely on the part of polluters seeking to avoid accountability (to great success, I might add). It helps that the 'environmental regulations' are written by the polluting industries themselves. They use poorly characterized mass flows through the environment (there's that word again) and pollution etiologies (often "poorly characterized" because the company covered up its toxicity research, eg PCBs) like a cryptocurrency tumbler, laundering away their own liability for poisoning their neighbors. It's unconscionable.
- HillaryBriss 8y ago
  > cannot restrict the right of people just because they’re acting together is that a generic legal principle?
- maxsilver 8y ago
  > When we say a corporation has the right to free speech, we mean that you cannot restrict the right of people just because they’re acting together through a corporation. Why not? We restrict the liability of people, just because they're 'acting together' (a corp). To make that trade off fair, it seems like we should limit their 'rights' together as well. Corporations are sort of fundamentally unfair as they exist in the US, because they get almost all of the rights a real person does, but they have almost none of the responsibilities or liabilities a real person does. Either [a] corporations should be required to be responsible for their actions (eliminate all limited liability, leadership and shareholders should become personally liable for most actions of the corporation they lead/own), or [b] corporations should loose a lot of their rights as a tradeoff for the reduced responsibilities and liabilities (like the ability for a corporation to have 'free speech').
Nasrudith 8y ago
Well for one corporations have actual people with clearly defined interests and ownership. Who can claim to speak on behalf of the river? At best it gives ownership to the representative to push their interests in an absurd farce like PETA trying to claim copyright on behalf of a monkey who took a picture of himself inadvertently. What is to stop a landowner from claiming what the river really wants is to be a cheap dumping ground for pollutants because it wants to be pretty?

kazoolist 8y ago

The concept behind corporations as "people" is that people don't lose rights just because they are engaging in their right of free association. The corporate entity only "has rights" because it is a collection of people, and those people have rights. Ecosystems aren't collections of people.

schiffern 8y ago
>Ecosystems aren't collections of people. Is the implication here that "only people have rights," therefore ecosystems shouldn't? Correct me if mistaken. To clarify, I wasn't arguing that ecosystems have rights because corporations do. This is indeed the status quo, but it's hardly immutable. Consider that 200 years ago neither women nor slaves were considered legal persons. Restating the status quo isn't an argument in its favor.

rayiner 8y ago

Corporations are legal entities composed of people, so it makes sense to treat that the aggregate would have similar rights as the individual. When we say a corporation has the right to free speech, we mean that you cannot restrict the right of people just because they’re acting together through a corporation. Rivers, of course, are not people nor are they composed of people. Nor are ecosystems. People might be affected by, for example, what happens to a river. All of this legal wrangling over river personhood is an attempt to avoid having to show that effect.

pfdietz 8y ago
Corporations are a weird kind of person, in that it's perfectly legal to murder them and sell their parts.
schiffern 8y ago
> Nor are ecosystems [composed of people]. Isn't that definition exactly the problem? An ecologist would disagree of course, but how curious that every other species is considered part of the ecosystem, but we are not! We're subject to all the same ecological laws. The humanity vs. nature separateness is of course entirely invented. But it's built into our very language: consider the other-ing effect of the term "environment" for instance. > All of this legal wrangling over river personhood is an attempt to avoid having to show that effect. You have it flipped around. The legal wrangling is almost entirely on the part of polluters seeking to avoid accountability (to great success, I might add). It helps that the 'environmental regulations' are written by the polluting industries themselves. They use poorly characterized mass flows through the environment (there's that word again) and pollution etiologies (often "poorly characterized" because the company covered up its toxicity research, eg PCBs) like a cryptocurrency tumbler, laundering away their own liability for poisoning their neighbors. It's unconscionable.
HillaryBriss 8y ago
> cannot restrict the right of people just because they’re acting together is that a generic legal principle?
maxsilver 8y ago
> When we say a corporation has the right to free speech, we mean that you cannot restrict the right of people just because they’re acting together through a corporation. Why not? We restrict the liability of people, just because they're 'acting together' (a corp). To make that trade off fair, it seems like we should limit their 'rights' together as well. Corporations are sort of fundamentally unfair as they exist in the US, because they get almost all of the rights a real person does, but they have almost none of the responsibilities or liabilities a real person does. Either [a] corporations should be required to be responsible for their actions (eliminate all limited liability, leadership and shareholders should become personally liable for most actions of the corporation they lead/own), or [b] corporations should loose a lot of their rights as a tradeoff for the reduced responsibilities and liabilities (like the ability for a corporation to have 'free speech').

Nasrudith 8y ago

Well for one corporations have actual people with clearly defined interests and ownership. Who can claim to speak on behalf of the river? At best it gives ownership to the representative to push their interests in an absurd farce like PETA trying to claim copyright on behalf of a monkey who took a picture of himself inadvertently. What is to stop a landowner from claiming what the river really wants is to be a cheap dumping ground for pollutants because it wants to be pretty?