I think what you're getting at is the distinction between "persons" and "natural persons." Typically when a law applies to "persons" (sometimes it will say "le

I think what you're getting at is the distinction between "persons" and "natural persons." Typically when a law applies to "persons" (sometimes it will say "legal persons") it applies to both corporations and humans for the reasons you've mentioned above - we need to be able to sue them, tax them, regulate them, etc. And when a law applies to "natural persons" it's intended to apply only to humans which is why, as much as you might love Amazon, you can't marry it. (So far no legal terminology to distinguish mountains that I'm aware of... ) To your point, corporations have always had "rights." The government can't just show up to your house and take your property without due process and, because corporations are "legal persons," the government can't just show up to company headquarters and take corporate property either. Corporations need some of the legal rights we grant to natural persons or else the corporate entity is pointless. But corporations also can't have the same rights as natural persons or else every stock broker is also a slave trader. The reason the Citizens United ruling was such a big deal was because the court extended first amendment rights to corporations when those rights had historically only been given to natural persons. If you get a chance you should read the opinion because the rationale seems much more reasonable on paper than it is in practice. Contrary to public opinion, the court didn't rule that "corporations are people" (technically they always were) but rather that corporations are associations of natural persons and since natural persons can form associations to exercise their first amendment rights then they can form corporations to exercise their first amendment rights. But for an entity whose purpose is to exist somewhere between human (definitely a person) and mountain (definitely not a person) it doesn't make sense to extend all of the rights of personhood to that entity just as it doesn't make sense to treat the entity the same way we treat a mountain. Lawyers can form associations to practice law but we certainly wouldn't allow a group to incorporate and have the entity sit for the bar exam... right? Citizens United certainly muddied the water in where the law draws that line.