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They’re treated as persons because they’re owned by persons, and it’s a lot easier to refer to the legal fiction than it is to invoke the legal rights of all th
by tomoyoirl 3y ago
They’re treated as persons because they’re owned by persons, and it’s a lot easier to refer to the legal fiction than it is to invoke the legal rights of all the owners (whoever they may be). A programmer should recognize a useful form of encapsulation.
The abstraction breaks under some circumstances. For instance, they get no voting rights (as voting can’t be done collectively by a group).
- advael 3y agoThen why does criminal liability not propogate to the owners? We have a good mechanism for that in criminal law, it's called "conspiracy"
- kelnos 3y agoThe problem is that they're afforded some important "person" rights, without many of the restrictions or responsibilities. Corporate malfeasance is punished much more leniently than personal malfeasance. Fines are usually wrist-slaps (and treated as a cost of doing business), and it's very difficult to hold executives and board members personally accountable for what are ultimately their actions. And yes, corporations don't get votes, but they do get to have an outsized influence on the votes of others through campaign donations.