6 ms·

> Whether the corporation should be considered a person is a matter of active academic and public debate. In my experience this is a US phenomenon. I am a lawy

> Whether the corporation should be considered a person is a matter of active academic and public debate. In my experience this is a US phenomenon. I am a lawyer in a different common law jurisdiction where corporate personhood is pretty much uncontroversial. Everyone knows that companies can deal in and own property, can enter into contracts, can sue and be sued. There is no real public debate about it. It seems to be controversial in the US because of the Citizens United decision. I have to admit I don't fully understand the significance of the Citizens United decision. I get that it was based on the idea that corporations have the same rights as people under the constitution and that its effect was to increase the influence of money in politics. But if Citizens United held that it's illegal to restrict corporate spending on politics, presumably it must have already been illegal to restrict individuals' spending on politics, so presumably wealthy individuals could have spent their money on politics anyway (the only difference being that it's slightly less convenient when you can't use a corporation)? If my understanding is wrong I'd be grateful to be educated.

none_to_remain 4y ago
I don't think there is any serious controversy about corporate personhood in the US. Plenty of unserious, ignorant shouting, though
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
  There is plenty of serious controversy about it. Should corporations be capable of holding religious conviction? Various evangelical Christian business owners and a number of conservative judges say "of course". Plenty of other serious, well-informed people say, in relatively quite voices, "absolutely not". Should a corporation organized for the purpose of making a profit be permitted to freely spend on political campaigns? SCOTUS thought yes, plenty of other people think not (even if they would allow non-profit corporations to do so). Plenty more like that.
- ghaff 4y ago
  There are reasonable criticisms of Citizens United around limiting spending of corporate money directly related to politics. However, the lazy "corporate personhood" putdown is mostly silly. Obviously there are and have long been many ways in which corporations, trade associations, LLPs, etc. effectively act as a person for mostly good reasons. Barring criminal acts, you really don't want people suing a company for some action to instead identify all the individuals who were involved in some decision and go after them personally.
  - saghm 4y ago
    > Barring criminal acts, you really don't want people suing a company for some action to instead identify all the individuals who were involved in some decision and go after them personally. You've inadvertently touched upon the thing I find most confusing about the concept of "corporate personhood", which is that they aren't treated anything like people when it comes to crimes. You might argue this makes sense, since they can't become citizens or vote either, but at that point I have to wonder why "corporations are people" is a more reasonable way to define things than just saying that some (but not all) things people do can also be done by corporations (like owning property, etc.). It makes as much sense to me as arguing that we should just define bats as birds because most animals that fly are birds, and it would be easier to just make "flying" only apply to birds instead of just saying it's a thing that non-birds can do as well.
    - ghaff 4y ago
      >a more reasonable way to define things than just saying that some (but not all) things people do can also be done by corporations (like owning property, etc.) I think that's the general state of affairs. A corporation can send out a press release the claims in which are not all on the PR person identified at the bottom. Absent criminal malfeasance, a CFO isn't personally on the hook for a contract that the company can't meet. An individual developer can't generally be sued by a customer for a big in their code. But people who didn't like the Citizens United decision rally around the corporate personhood flag even though, of course, corporations and other entities take collective actions that aren't always about individual responsibility.
avgcorrection 4y ago
> In my experience this is a US phenomenon. Yeah I think so to. Regarding “public debate”, no lay person would really have an intuition for a corporation being a person. It’t not considered one. > I am a lawyer in a different common law jurisdiction where corporate personhood is pretty much uncontroversial. Oh ok…
cowmoo728 4y ago
The primary issue, as I understand it, is front groups. Like some big industry will put up a 501c4 front group called something generic like "Cool People of America" and spend $1B of secret money to accuse their opponent of eating babies. No one can know where the money came from or really anything about the group, but they still have a legal right to spend unlimited amounts of money. It's easier for the public to understand if the money is attributable to company X or person Z.
- silvestrov 4y ago
  Interesting. In EU there is a big push for documenting the real ownership of companies. So you can't hide behind shell companies. I.e. a difference between "legal owner" and "real owner". E.g. a comapny like "nemlig.com Inc" is owned by "INTERVARE Inc" which is owned by 2 persons. But you still have to document those 2 persons for nemlig.com See "Ejerforhold/Ownership" on https://datacvr.virk.dk/enhed/virksomhed/33070861 https://datacvr.virk.dk/enhed/virksomhed/33070861
Isamu 4y ago
Corporations were developed as a legal entity to take on responsibility and rights on behalf of a group that previously were only associated with a person. But it is more of an analogy, and like all analogies it falls apart at some point. It doesn’t quite make sense to permit a corporation to be President, you would have to interpret the law in creative ways that likely would not prevail in court.
greenpresident 4y ago
This debate is internationally relevant when it comes to moral agency of corporations. The question is whether corporations have first-order moral responsibilities or whether all the responsibilities fall onto the shareholders. It is separate from the question of legal personhood which I agree is not controversial in most discourses.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
JackFr 4y ago
I would suggest reading the actual opinion. Supreme Court Justices are typically pretty clear and concise writers. It’s very surprising how approachable the texts are. There is some value to reading “explainers” who might explain some context or history, but less than you might imagine because every explainer typically brings a slant or spin of their own.
hliyan 4y ago
While corporate personhood is uncontroversial in the context of legal tradition, I've always wondered whether another intelligent species with a psychology similar to ours (or even humanity, had our cultural development taken a different path), would consider it a fundamental legal concept. If a natural person were to be incentivised as a corporation is (i.e. complete self interest, only held back by the law, and even then, only if the penalty is higher than the profit from the action that led to it), we would generally describe them as a "sociopath".
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
tbrownaw 4y ago
A fair few people really don't like how robust our free speech protections are. Citizens United upheld those protections against yet another attempted "workaround".
- hgsgm 4y ago
  You mean free spending, because US government decided that spending money is speech or press.
- SQueeeeeL 4y ago
  [flagged]
- branko_d 4y ago
  Whatever the theoretical justification for Citizens United might have been, the practical effect is that it weakens the free speech.
hikawaii 4y ago
The big issue here was with financing political spend as a corporation, and the finding was that there is no law today that stops corporate political spend. The reasoning was along the lines that because corporations are people, and most organizations in the US are technically corporations (yes, even nonprofits, ngos, unions, clubs, etc) there's not really a way to subset out "large publicly held international conglomerates" or "businesses in industries that are mostly supplying the government" from "all social, business, and political organizations"

none_to_remain 4y ago

I don't think there is any serious controversy about corporate personhood in the US. Plenty of unserious, ignorant shouting, though

PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
There is plenty of serious controversy about it. Should corporations be capable of holding religious conviction? Various evangelical Christian business owners and a number of conservative judges say "of course". Plenty of other serious, well-informed people say, in relatively quite voices, "absolutely not". Should a corporation organized for the purpose of making a profit be permitted to freely spend on political campaigns? SCOTUS thought yes, plenty of other people think not (even if they would allow non-profit corporations to do so). Plenty more like that.
ghaff 4y ago
There are reasonable criticisms of Citizens United around limiting spending of corporate money directly related to politics. However, the lazy "corporate personhood" putdown is mostly silly. Obviously there are and have long been many ways in which corporations, trade associations, LLPs, etc. effectively act as a person for mostly good reasons. Barring criminal acts, you really don't want people suing a company for some action to instead identify all the individuals who were involved in some decision and go after them personally.
- saghm 4y ago
  > Barring criminal acts, you really don't want people suing a company for some action to instead identify all the individuals who were involved in some decision and go after them personally. You've inadvertently touched upon the thing I find most confusing about the concept of "corporate personhood", which is that they aren't treated anything like people when it comes to crimes. You might argue this makes sense, since they can't become citizens or vote either, but at that point I have to wonder why "corporations are people" is a more reasonable way to define things than just saying that some (but not all) things people do can also be done by corporations (like owning property, etc.). It makes as much sense to me as arguing that we should just define bats as birds because most animals that fly are birds, and it would be easier to just make "flying" only apply to birds instead of just saying it's a thing that non-birds can do as well.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    >a more reasonable way to define things than just saying that some (but not all) things people do can also be done by corporations (like owning property, etc.) I think that's the general state of affairs. A corporation can send out a press release the claims in which are not all on the PR person identified at the bottom. Absent criminal malfeasance, a CFO isn't personally on the hook for a contract that the company can't meet. An individual developer can't generally be sued by a customer for a big in their code. But people who didn't like the Citizens United decision rally around the corporate personhood flag even though, of course, corporations and other entities take collective actions that aren't always about individual responsibility.

avgcorrection 4y ago

> In my experience this is a US phenomenon. Yeah I think so to. Regarding “public debate”, no lay person would really have an intuition for a corporation being a person. It’t not considered one. > I am a lawyer in a different common law jurisdiction where corporate personhood is pretty much uncontroversial. Oh ok…

cowmoo728 4y ago

The primary issue, as I understand it, is front groups. Like some big industry will put up a 501c4 front group called something generic like "Cool People of America" and spend $1B of secret money to accuse their opponent of eating babies. No one can know where the money came from or really anything about the group, but they still have a legal right to spend unlimited amounts of money. It's easier for the public to understand if the money is attributable to company X or person Z.

silvestrov 4y ago
Interesting. In EU there is a big push for documenting the real ownership of companies. So you can't hide behind shell companies. I.e. a difference between "legal owner" and "real owner". E.g. a comapny like "nemlig.com Inc" is owned by "INTERVARE Inc" which is owned by 2 persons. But you still have to document those 2 persons for nemlig.com See "Ejerforhold/Ownership" on https://datacvr.virk.dk/enhed/virksomhed/33070861 https://datacvr.virk.dk/enhed/virksomhed/33070861

Isamu 4y ago

Corporations were developed as a legal entity to take on responsibility and rights on behalf of a group that previously were only associated with a person. But it is more of an analogy, and like all analogies it falls apart at some point. It doesn’t quite make sense to permit a corporation to be President, you would have to interpret the law in creative ways that likely would not prevail in court.

greenpresident 4y ago

This debate is internationally relevant when it comes to moral agency of corporations. The question is whether corporations have first-order moral responsibilities or whether all the responsibilities fall onto the shareholders. It is separate from the question of legal personhood which I agree is not controversial in most discourses.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

JackFr 4y ago

I would suggest reading the actual opinion. Supreme Court Justices are typically pretty clear and concise writers. It’s very surprising how approachable the texts are. There is some value to reading “explainers” who might explain some context or history, but less than you might imagine because every explainer typically brings a slant or spin of their own.

hliyan 4y ago

While corporate personhood is uncontroversial in the context of legal tradition, I've always wondered whether another intelligent species with a psychology similar to ours (or even humanity, had our cultural development taken a different path), would consider it a fundamental legal concept. If a natural person were to be incentivised as a corporation is (i.e. complete self interest, only held back by the law, and even then, only if the penalty is higher than the profit from the action that led to it), we would generally describe them as a "sociopath".

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

tbrownaw 4y ago

A fair few people really don't like how robust our free speech protections are. Citizens United upheld those protections against yet another attempted "workaround".

hgsgm 4y ago
You mean free spending, because US government decided that spending money is speech or press.
SQueeeeeL 4y ago
[flagged]
branko_d 4y ago
Whatever the theoretical justification for Citizens United might have been, the practical effect is that it weakens the free speech.

hikawaii 4y ago

The big issue here was with financing political spend as a corporation, and the finding was that there is no law today that stops corporate political spend. The reasoning was along the lines that because corporations are people, and most organizations in the US are technically corporations (yes, even nonprofits, ngos, unions, clubs, etc) there's not really a way to subset out "large publicly held international conglomerates" or "businesses in industries that are mostly supplying the government" from "all social, business, and political organizations"