This is a nice tagline, but I think it's much more benign than it sounds, and it's not exclusive to America. It's just a legal convention to help think about h

This is a nice tagline, but I think it's much more benign than it sounds, and it's not exclusive to America. It's just a legal convention to help think about how corporations fit into laws not explicitly written for them. For example, who can enter legal contracts and what are the repercussions if they are broken? Well contract law was thought of around people, but if you think of a corporation similarly, then the law still makes sense. Of course, they can and do specify restrictions that only apply to corporations or opt them out.