6 ms·

Corporations aren't people. You're misrepresenting Citizens United

patentatt 7y ago
The gp comment doesn’t seem to mention citizens united ... why bring it up in response to a comment about corporate personhood? It is almost completely non sequitur
- khazhou 7y ago
  Almost every modern reference to "Corporations are now people!" is a callback to Citizens United. If the commenter I replied to is not aware of and was not referring to that, I apologize. But... he probably was. A simple search for "corporation are people" or "corporate personhood" will bring up articles that immediately and extensively focus on Citizens United.
  - wilg 7y ago
    And/or to Mitt Romney saying "corporations are people, my friend" which happened around the same time and this was a big political topic. The idea of corporate personhood became popularized around this time.
tr3ndyBEAR 7y ago
Citizen's United is not the only case relevant to the idea of corporate personhood. There's a whole history of corporations earning rights usually reserved for people. You can read the wikipedia page for "corporate personhood" if you want to learn more about the history of it and specific cases and rights afforded to corporations.
- chrstphrhrt 7y ago
  Since I just read about this in a course, the main reference (at least for Canada/UK/Commonwealth) is the Salomon case from 1895: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salomon_v_A_Salomon_%26_Co_Ltd https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salomon_v_A_Salomon_%26_Co_Ltd So, not new. I think people overreact to hearing that corporations are (legal) "persons" when in fact they are not anything like natural persons (no body, no constitutional rights). As I understand it, directors and officers are the ones held personally liable in criminal matters, but corporations can still be liable for negligence and breach of contract etc. IANAL. Sounds like it is different in the US. Does citizens united somehow make corporations more like people?
  - dodobirdlord 7y ago
    It did not, in the sense that it only clarified a constitutional issue. The crux is that while corporations are complex legal fictions, they are still ultimately property owned and managed by actual people with constitutional rights. Corporations inherit on incorporation the constitutional protections that the incorporators would have if they were acting directly. In the words used in the majority opinion of the court, "If the First Amendment has any force, it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech."
googlemike 7y ago
How should one interpret it then?
- eindiran 7y ago
  From the Wikipedia page: "Although the decision does not address "corporate personhood," a long-established judicial and constitutional concept, much attention has focused on that issue."[0] "How should one interpret [the case] then?" Recognize that Citizen's United is _not_ about corporate personhood, and actually read what the case was about. The number of times I've heard people making snarky remarks about Citizen's United without having read anything about the case is amazing. In the US, corporate personhood is about: (1) Corporations having equal protection under the law as persons (ie the 14th amendment applies to corporations). (2) Coporations having the same rights as persons to draft and enforce contracts, making them "legal entities". This is related to (3). (3) "Person" as a concept applies to associations of people rather than just individuals; associations of individuals includes corporations. See here: [1] None of these things were decided in Citizen's United and further, it had no legal bearing on the case law surrounding these things. Instead Citizen's United was about whether a particular law violated the 1st Amendment. Specifically the law prohibited corporations from releasing media 60 days before an election if it could impact the results of that election by reaching 50,000 or more people in the electorate. But the 1st Amendment makes no distinction between e.g. newspaper companies and other corporations, so the majority opinion was that this law and other laws that limit speech of associations of people infringe on the 1st Amendment. From the opinion: "If the First Amendment has any force, it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech." [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_person https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_person
  - geofft 7y ago
    That's all well and good, but 'frequentnapper did not actually say anything about Citizens United in the first place. If corporations are people, we should jail them. If corporations aren't people, why do they have legal rights independent of the individual, jailable people who constitute them?
sumedh 7y ago
> Corporations aren't people. As per a former presidential candidate, they are, my friend. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/12/us/politics/12romney.html https://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/12/us/politics/12romney.html

The gp comment doesn’t seem to mention citizens united ... why bring it up in response to a comment about corporate personhood? It is almost completely non sequitur

khazhou 7y ago
Almost every modern reference to "Corporations are now people!" is a callback to Citizens United. If the commenter I replied to is not aware of and was not referring to that, I apologize. But... he probably was. A simple search for "corporation are people" or "corporate personhood" will bring up articles that immediately and extensively focus on Citizens United.
- wilg 7y ago
  And/or to Mitt Romney saying "corporations are people, my friend" which happened around the same time and this was a big political topic. The idea of corporate personhood became popularized around this time.

tr3ndyBEAR 7y ago

Citizen's United is not the only case relevant to the idea of corporate personhood. There's a whole history of corporations earning rights usually reserved for people. You can read the wikipedia page for "corporate personhood" if you want to learn more about the history of it and specific cases and rights afforded to corporations.

chrstphrhrt 7y ago
Since I just read about this in a course, the main reference (at least for Canada/UK/Commonwealth) is the Salomon case from 1895: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salomon_v_A_Salomon_%26_Co_Ltd https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salomon_v_A_Salomon_%26_Co_Ltd So, not new. I think people overreact to hearing that corporations are (legal) "persons" when in fact they are not anything like natural persons (no body, no constitutional rights). As I understand it, directors and officers are the ones held personally liable in criminal matters, but corporations can still be liable for negligence and breach of contract etc. IANAL. Sounds like it is different in the US. Does citizens united somehow make corporations more like people?
- dodobirdlord 7y ago
  It did not, in the sense that it only clarified a constitutional issue. The crux is that while corporations are complex legal fictions, they are still ultimately property owned and managed by actual people with constitutional rights. Corporations inherit on incorporation the constitutional protections that the incorporators would have if they were acting directly. In the words used in the majority opinion of the court, "If the First Amendment has any force, it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech."

googlemike 7y ago

How should one interpret it then?

eindiran 7y ago
From the Wikipedia page: "Although the decision does not address "corporate personhood," a long-established judicial and constitutional concept, much attention has focused on that issue."[0] "How should one interpret [the case] then?" Recognize that Citizen's United is _not_ about corporate personhood, and actually read what the case was about. The number of times I've heard people making snarky remarks about Citizen's United without having read anything about the case is amazing. In the US, corporate personhood is about: (1) Corporations having equal protection under the law as persons (ie the 14th amendment applies to corporations). (2) Coporations having the same rights as persons to draft and enforce contracts, making them "legal entities". This is related to (3). (3) "Person" as a concept applies to associations of people rather than just individuals; associations of individuals includes corporations. See here: [1] None of these things were decided in Citizen's United and further, it had no legal bearing on the case law surrounding these things. Instead Citizen's United was about whether a particular law violated the 1st Amendment. Specifically the law prohibited corporations from releasing media 60 days before an election if it could impact the results of that election by reaching 50,000 or more people in the electorate. But the 1st Amendment makes no distinction between e.g. newspaper companies and other corporations, so the majority opinion was that this law and other laws that limit speech of associations of people infringe on the 1st Amendment. From the opinion: "If the First Amendment has any force, it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech." [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_person https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_person
- geofft 7y ago
  That's all well and good, but 'frequentnapper did not actually say anything about Citizens United in the first place. If corporations are people, we should jail them. If corporations aren't people, why do they have legal rights independent of the individual, jailable people who constitute them?

sumedh 7y ago

> Corporations aren't people. As per a former presidential candidate, they are, my friend. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/12/us/politics/12romney.html https://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/12/us/politics/12romney.html