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Corporate personhood is unconstitutional, the rights of human beings don't apply to imaginary legal constructions designed to protect the holders of capital fro

Corporate personhood is unconstitutional, the rights of human beings don't apply to imaginary legal constructions designed to protect the holders of capital from having any criminal or civil responsibility for the actions of the corporations that they ultimately control. It's a system in which major shareholders benefit from the criminal and reckless behavior of executives (who get large bonuses for taking the risk, although as the 2008-2009 subprime mortgage fraud episode demonstrated, even they don't face much real risk for engaging in criminal activities on behalf of their shareholders). At the very least, if corporations are people, they should be subjected to the death penalty for engaging in egregious misconduct - state seizure of all corporate assets with no compensation to shareholders followed by restructuring makes sense in such cases, e.g. Boeing, Purdue Pharma, etc.

nine_zeros 3y ago
Until corporations can be arrested, they cannot be given the same rights as people.
Strang 3y ago
Corporate personhood includes the ability for corporations to own property, enter contracts, and serve as plaintiff or defendant. And corporations have civil rights only as a tool of shareholders' civil rights. For example, Citizens United was a corporation formed expressly for the purposes of political speech.
- moate 3y ago
  Corporate personhood is a way for a “corporation” to take responsibility for the actual humans that comprise is. It’s a passing of responsibility from the real to the unreal. All founders/CEOs should be responsible for their creations. You want to helm a massive, un-democratic monster of “innovation and job creation” in order to accrue wealth? Fine, but you’re putting yourself at a major risk.
  - tomoyoirl 3y ago
    It sounds like you are confusing corporate personhood with limited liability.
pwillia7 3y ago
Show me Asset Forfeiture before the company is proven guilty because the money committed the crime!
ihumanable 3y ago
The history of corporate personhood entering into the American legal system is absolutely bonkers. This whole article is worth a read, but I'll pull out the short version too https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/03/corporations-people-adam-winkler/554852/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/03/corpora... How did this idea enter the legal system? This is the work of a few men. Justice Stephen J. Field was angry about the case Santa Clara County v Souther Pacific Railroad. He was incensed because the court refused to answer the question of whether or not corporations were people. > When the Court issued its decision on this second case, the justices expressly declined to decide if corporations were people. The dispute could be, and was, resolved on other grounds, prompting an angry rebuke from one justice, Stephen J. Field, who castigated his colleagues for failing to address “the important constitutional questions involved.” “At the present day, nearly all great enterprises are conducted by corporations,” he wrote, and they deserved to know if they had equal rights too. The mechanism that decisions were communicated in the 1880s was to publish official volumes of decisions. J.C. Bancroft Davis acted as the court reporter for the volume containing this case and wrote up an inaccurate summary of the case. > The reporter in the 1880s was J. C. Bancroft Davis, whose wildly inaccurate summary of the Southern Pacific case said that the Court had ruled that “corporations are persons within … the Fourteenth Amendment.” Whether his summary was an error or something more nefarious—Davis had once been the president of the Newburgh and New York Railway company—will likely never be known. Justic Field seized upon the incorrect summary and would inject his preferred reality into an unrelated case. > Field nonetheless saw Davis’s erroneous summary as an opportunity. A few years later, in an opinion in an unrelated case, Field wrote that “corporations are persons within the meaning” of the Fourteenth Amendment. “It was so held in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad,” explained Field, who knew very well that the Court had done no such thing. It is that completely made up precedent that then became the foundation for legal corporate personhood.

nine_zeros 3y ago

Until corporations can be arrested, they cannot be given the same rights as people.

Strang 3y ago

Corporate personhood includes the ability for corporations to own property, enter contracts, and serve as plaintiff or defendant. And corporations have civil rights only as a tool of shareholders' civil rights. For example, Citizens United was a corporation formed expressly for the purposes of political speech.

moate 3y ago
Corporate personhood is a way for a “corporation” to take responsibility for the actual humans that comprise is. It’s a passing of responsibility from the real to the unreal. All founders/CEOs should be responsible for their creations. You want to helm a massive, un-democratic monster of “innovation and job creation” in order to accrue wealth? Fine, but you’re putting yourself at a major risk.
- tomoyoirl 3y ago
  It sounds like you are confusing corporate personhood with limited liability.

pwillia7 3y ago

Show me Asset Forfeiture before the company is proven guilty because the money committed the crime!

ihumanable 3y ago

The history of corporate personhood entering into the American legal system is absolutely bonkers. This whole article is worth a read, but I'll pull out the short version too https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/03/corporations-people-adam-winkler/554852/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/03/corpora... How did this idea enter the legal system? This is the work of a few men. Justice Stephen J. Field was angry about the case Santa Clara County v Souther Pacific Railroad. He was incensed because the court refused to answer the question of whether or not corporations were people. > When the Court issued its decision on this second case, the justices expressly declined to decide if corporations were people. The dispute could be, and was, resolved on other grounds, prompting an angry rebuke from one justice, Stephen J. Field, who castigated his colleagues for failing to address “the important constitutional questions involved.” “At the present day, nearly all great enterprises are conducted by corporations,” he wrote, and they deserved to know if they had equal rights too. The mechanism that decisions were communicated in the 1880s was to publish official volumes of decisions. J.C. Bancroft Davis acted as the court reporter for the volume containing this case and wrote up an inaccurate summary of the case. > The reporter in the 1880s was J. C. Bancroft Davis, whose wildly inaccurate summary of the Southern Pacific case said that the Court had ruled that “corporations are persons within … the Fourteenth Amendment.” Whether his summary was an error or something more nefarious—Davis had once been the president of the Newburgh and New York Railway company—will likely never be known. Justic Field seized upon the incorrect summary and would inject his preferred reality into an unrelated case. > Field nonetheless saw Davis’s erroneous summary as an opportunity. A few years later, in an opinion in an unrelated case, Field wrote that “corporations are persons within the meaning” of the Fourteenth Amendment. “It was so held in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad,” explained Field, who knew very well that the Court had done no such thing. It is that completely made up precedent that then became the foundation for legal corporate personhood.