Corporations are People?

[lpetrich]

'Corporations Are People' Is Built on a 19th-Century Lie - The Atlantic:

How a farcical series of events in the 1880s produced an enduring and controversial legal precedent.

Somewhat unintuitively, American corporations today enjoy many of the same rights as American citizens. Both, for instance, are entitled to the freedom of speech and the freedom of religion. ...

It was some litigation over property taxes in California in the 1880's, litigation involving one of the biggest businesses of the day, at least in California: the Southern Pacific Railroad. The railroad's lawyers argued that a proposed property tax was unconstitutional discrimination according to the Fourteenth Amendment.

As he spoke before the Court on Southern Pacific’s behalf, Conkling recounted an astonishing tale. In the 1860s, when he was a young congressman, Conkling had served on the drafting committee that was responsible for writing the Fourteenth Amendment. Then the last member of the committee still living, Conkling told the justices that the drafters had changed the wording of the amendment, replacing “citizens” with “persons” in order to cover corporations too. Laws referring to “persons,” he said, have “by long and constant acceptance … been held to embrace artificial persons as well as natural persons.” Conkling buttressed his account with a surprising piece of evidence: a musty old journal he claimed was a previously unpublished record of the deliberations of the drafting committee.

Years later, historians would discover that Conkling’s journal was real but his story was a fraud. The journal was in fact a record of the congressional committee’s deliberations but, upon close examination, it offered no evidence that the drafters intended to protect corporations. It showed, in fact, that the language of the equal-protection clause was never changed from “citizen” to “person.” So far as anyone can tell, the rights of corporations were not raised in the public debates over the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment or in any of the states’ ratifying conventions. And, prior to Conkling’s appearance on behalf of Southern Pacific, no member of the drafting committee had ever suggested that corporations were covered.

However, the Supreme Court decided this and another case involving that railroad without claiming that corporations are legal people.

Then this happened:

The Supreme Court’s opinions are officially published in volumes edited by an administrator called the reporter of decisions. By tradition, the reporter writes up a summary of the Court’s opinion and includes it at the beginning of the opinion. 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.

Supreme Court Justice Stephen J. Field seized on this misstatement and ruled in another case that corporations are indeed people.

Indeed, the faux precedent in the Southern Pacific case would go on to be used by a Supreme Court that in the early 20th century became famous for striking down numerous economic regulations, including federal child-labor laws, zoning laws, and wage-and-hour laws. Meanwhile, in cases like the notorious Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), those same justices refused to read the Constitution as protecting the rights of African Americans, the real intended beneficiaries of the Fourteenth Amendment. Between 1868, when the amendment was ratified, and 1912, the Supreme Court would rule on 28 cases involving the rights of African Americans and an astonishing 312 cases on the rights of corporations.

When Mitt Romney once stated that "corporations are people, my friend", that was what he was referring to. Mitt Romney says ‘corporations are people’ - The Washington Post

 

[repoman]

That and anchor babies are bad stuff from this amendment.

 

[Bomb#20]

'Corporations Are People' Is Built on a 19th-Century Lie - The Atlantic:

How a farcical series of events in the 1880s produced an enduring and controversial legal precedent.

Somewhat unintuitively, American corporations today enjoy many of the same rights as American citizens. Both, for instance, are entitled to the freedom of speech and the freedom of religion. ...

It was some litigation over property taxes in California in the 1880's, litigation involving one of the biggest businesses of the day, at least in California: the Southern Pacific Railroad. The railroad's lawyers argued that a proposed property tax was unconstitutional discrimination according to the Fourteenth Amendment.

However, the Supreme Court decided this and another case involving that railroad without claiming that corporations are legal people.

Then this happened: ...

Speaking of enduring lies, where are all these infamous cases where a wicked or delusional Supreme Court ruled against valiant censor-wannabes supposedly on account of corporate personhood? "Corporations are legal persons" is judges' shorthand for "You can sue and be sued by a corporation. You don't have to track down all the shareholders and sue them individually for their pro-rated share of the damage their employees did to you. The shareholders don't have to all show up in court with individual complaints against you to get their pro-rated shares of the damage you did to their property." It is a completely benign legal practice. If one actually reads a case that censorship fans ceaselessly preach was based on corporations having been granted free speech rights because the court decided they were people, such as Citizens United, one finds that in fact the court presented completely different reasons for its decision and did not rely on some stupid misreported 19th-century property tax case.

Freedom of speech applies to corporations for pretty much the same reason that freedom of the press applies to laser printers even though they aren't literal printing presses, and freedom from unreasonable search and seizure applies to computer files even though they aren't literal papers: because people in this country don't legally lose our rights just for using different technology from whichever technology 18th-century constitution drafters had in mind. The government doesn't legally get to censor you for using a laser printer instead of a printing press; why the devil would anyone imagine it's legal for it to censor you for using a corporation instead of equipment you own directly?

Corporations don't talk; people talk -- when a censor punishes speech he defines as "corporate speech", the fact that the censor labels it "corporate speech" doesn't magically make the human who was actually the one doing the talking not a human. And corporations don't suffer; people suffer -- when a censor punishes speech he defines as "corporate speech", the fact that the censor labels his action "punishing the corporation" doesn't magically make it the corporation and not the humans who do the suffering. So when you suppress your political enemies' "I hate Hillary" movie, you are doing it by threatening to punish real live breathing born-of-woman human beings for the "crime" of real live breathing born-of-woman human beings saying they hate Hillary.

When one of our horde of would-be-censors tells himself his threat against those human beings shouldn't be illegal, because he's only doing it to a legal fiction and not to humans, and because it's only corporate personhood and misapplication of the 14th amendment to non-humans that makes it illegal, and because his conduct isn't exactly the sort of thing the constitution authors had in mind when they wrote "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech", he's lying to himself.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

OK, they're really Martians -- But why shouldn't Martians have the same rights as people?

(The movie "They Live!" showed us what the corporations really are.)

'Corporations Are People' Is Built on a 19th-Century Lie - The Atlantic:

How a farcical series of events in the 1880s produced an enduring and controversial legal precedent.

Somewhat unintuitively, American corporations today enjoy many of the same rights as American citizens. Both, for instance, are entitled to the freedom of speech and the freedom of religion. ...

It was some litigation over property taxes in California in the 1880's, litigation involving one of the biggest businesses of the day, at least in California: the Southern Pacific Railroad. The railroad's lawyers argued that a proposed property tax was unconstitutional discrimination according to the Fourteenth Amendment.

However, the Supreme Court decided this and another case involving that railroad without claiming that corporations are legal people.

Then this happened: ...

Speaking of enduring lies, where are all these infamous cases where a wicked or delusional Supreme Court ruled against valiant censor-wannabes supposedly on account of corporate personhood? "Corporations are legal persons" is judges' shorthand for "You can sue and be sued by a corporation. You don't have to track down all the shareholders and sue them individually for their pro-rated share of the damage their employees did to you. The shareholders don't have to all show up in court with individual complaints against you to get their pro-rated shares of the damage you did to their property." It is a completely benign legal practice. If one actually reads a case that censorship fans ceaselessly preach was based on corporations having been granted free speech rights because the court decided they were people, such as Citizens United, one finds that in fact the court presented completely different reasons for its decision and did not rely on some stupid misreported 19th-century property tax case.

Freedom of speech applies to corporations for pretty much the same reason that freedom of the press applies to laser printers even though they aren't literal printing presses, and freedom from unreasonable search and seizure applies to computer files even though they aren't literal papers: because people in this country don't legally lose our rights just for using different technology from whichever technology 18th-century constitution drafters had in mind. The government doesn't legally get to censor you for using a laser printer instead of a printing press; why the devil would anyone imagine it's legal for it to censor you for using a corporation instead of equipment you own directly?

Corporations don't talk; people talk -- when a censor punishes speech he defines as "corporate speech", the fact that the censor labels it "corporate speech" doesn't magically make the human who was actually the one doing the talking not a human. And corporations don't suffer; people suffer -- when a censor punishes speech he defines as "corporate speech", the fact that the censor labels his action "punishing the corporation" doesn't magically make it the corporation and not the humans who do the suffering. So when you suppress your political enemies' "I hate Hillary" movie, you are doing it by threatening to punish real live breathing born-of-woman human beings for the "crime" of real live breathing born-of-woman human beings saying they hate Hillary.

When one of our horde of would-be-censors tells himself his threat against those human beings shouldn't be illegal, because he's only doing it to a legal fiction and not to humans, and because it's only corporate personhood and misapplication of the 14th amendment to non-humans that makes it illegal, and because his conduct isn't exactly the sort of thing the constitution authors had in mind when they wrote "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech", he's lying to himself.

Whatever.

The point is -- corporations should be free to donate to candidates without restriction, just as individuals should be free to donate to candidates without restriction.

Millions of Americans, probably most, are better off as a result of the corporate contributions to candidates.

The only qualifier to this should be to tax the contributions. Perhaps something like a tax on all contributions over $100, or over $500. Or a special tax on the political ads, on the commercials. So the political donations can be a source of government revenue.

 

[untermensche]

Either a government controls corporations or corporations control the government.

Right now the corporations control the government. They have paid for and bought politicians.

And anybody who is not part of a corporation suffers.

Humans progress despite these unneeded monstrosities. In many ways corporations destroy innovation and make innovation more difficult.

 

[Bomb#20]

Whatever.

The point is -- corporations should be free to donate to candidates without restriction, just as individuals should be free to donate to candidates without restriction.

No, that's your point. Feel free to argue for it. But it's neither my point, nor the Supreme Court's point, nor "the" point. The Supreme Court did not rule that corporations should be free to donate to candidates without restriction; they have in fact upheld such prohibitions. True, many commentators on both sides of this debate appear to be too intellectually or ideologically crippled to be able to tell the difference between speaking out against electing someone and giving money to her opponent; but the Supreme Court does not share that mental handicap.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

Any entity, big or small, in the Universe should be free to donate to candidates without restriction.

Whatever.

The point is -- corporations should be free to donate to candidates without restriction, just as individuals should be free to donate to candidates without restriction.

No, that's your point. Feel free to argue for it. But it's neither my point, nor the Supreme Court's point, nor "the" point. The Supreme Court did not rule that corporations should be free to donate to candidates without restriction;[

It extended the freedom of corporations to donate. Which was a step in the right direction.

they have in fact upheld such prohibitions.

But also struck down other such prohibitions, which was an improvement.

True, many commentators on both sides of this debate appear to be too intellectually or ideologically crippled to be able to tell the difference between speaking out against electing someone and giving money to her opponent; but the Supreme Court does not share that mental handicap.

nitpicking

The point is: You can give no reason why corporations should be restricted from donating to candidates any more than individuals should be restricted from donating to candidates.

Even if it's true that the corporations are really Martians in disguise.

Even Martians/aliens/Russians and groups of any kind -- race, creed, color, species, nationality -- should be free to donate to candidates just as humans/individuals/citizens should be free to do so.

You can't give any reason why this particular exercise of free speech/press needs to be restricted.

 

[Bomb#20]

It extended the freedom of corporations to donate. Which was a step in the right direction.

No it didn't. It extended the freedom of corporations to run their own ads. The rules against donating stayed as they were.

True, many commentators on both sides of this debate appear to be too intellectually or ideologically crippled to be able to tell the difference between speaking out against electing someone and giving money to her opponent; but the Supreme Court does not share that mental handicap.

nitpicking

If you say so. Nitpicking the line between what the constitution permits the government to do and what it doesn't is kind of the Supreme Court's job.

The point is: You can give no reason why corporations should be restricted from donating to candidates any more than individuals should be restricted from donating to candidates.

Even if it's true that the corporations are really Martians in disguise.

Even Martians/aliens/Russians and groups of any kind -- race, creed, color, species, nationality -- should be free to donate to candidates just as humans/individuals/citizens should be free to do so.

You can't give any reason why this particular exercise of free speech/press

Donating to a candidate isn't an exercise of free speech/press. It's an exercise of giving money away. Making an ad and running it on TV/in a newspaper is an exercise of free speech/press. This isn't rocket science.

needs to be restricted.

Maybe I can; maybe I can't; either way, it's off-topic in this thread. This is a thread about what the law is. If you want to talk about what the law needs to be, you could always start a thread on that.

 

[Elixir]

Here's an idea - do away with elections and campaigning altogether. Simply have two bank accounts, each open to unlimited donations by individuals and corporations. Whichever candidate's bank account has the most money in it by midnight Nov 7, wins, and all the money from both accounts goes into the treasury. Save all the trouble, time and expense of conducting elections, debates etc., spare us the lies and deceit and go with the foregone results.
Republicans forever!

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

Even if corporations are non-people, they should still have the same right to donate to candidates.

It extended the freedom of corporations to donate. Which was a step in the right direction.

No it didn't. It extended the freedom of corporations to run their own ads. The rules against donating stayed as they were.

You're calling Thom Hartmann a liar, and Bernie Sanders. They keep saying the Court extended the right of corporations to donate, overturning a law passed by Congress.

It's irrelevant about the nitpicking details of the decision.

The complaint is that corporations should not have this power to influence elections because they don't have the same rights as individuals/people. I.e., they're not "people" and so should not have the same right to donate, or rather, there should be limits on how much they can donate.

Which is wrong, because even if corporations are something nonhuman, like aliens from another galaxy, they should still have the same right to donate as humans do. So it's silly to pound the table shouting that they are not people, as Bernie Sanders and others do.

The point is: You can give no reason why corporations should be restricted from donating to candidates any more than individuals should be restricted from donating to candidates.

Even if it's true that the corporations are really Martians in disguise.

Even Martians/aliens/Russians and groups of any kind -- race, creed, color, species, nationality -- should be free to donate to candidates just as humans/individuals/citizens should be free to do so.

You can't give any reason why this particular exercise of free speech/press needs to be restricted.

Donating to a candidate isn't an exercise of free speech/press. It's an exercise of giving money away.

Same thing. Corporations should have the same freedom to give money away as humans/individuals have. If the money is spent on publishing or broadcasting, that's speech and printing. If they're restricted from donating to that, it's curtailing their speech/publishing. Whether corporations are people or not they should still have that freedom.

The law should not restrict any entity's freedom to publish or broadcast or donate to someone's campaign. Regardless what kind of entity he/she/it is.

Making an ad and running it on TV/in a newspaper is an exercise of free speech/press.

Or donating to someone else doing it is also an exercise of free speech/press. Those who pay for it are part of the operation of doing it.

either way, it's off-topic in this thread. This is a thread about what the law is.

Or what the law should be. It's about whether it makes a difference if corporations are people, or whether it should make a difference. Or whether their rights are different if they are not people.

If you want to talk about what the law needs to be, you could always start a thread on that.

Or you could always start a thread on what people ought to talk about, or start threads about.

What should be allowed to corporations because they are people or non-people is close enough to the title of this thread. And the answer is that being non-people should not disqualify an entity from having the same rights as people. Or at least the same right to publish or broadcast or donate to candidates.

 

[Elixir]

even if corporations are something nonhuman, like aliens from another galaxy, they should still have the same right to donate as humans do.

As Trump will be able to tell you from his jail cell, not all humans have the right to "donate" to US elections.

 

[Bomb#20]

Here's an idea - do away with elections and campaigning altogether. Simply have two bank accounts, each open to unlimited donations by individuals and corporations. Whichever candidate's bank account has the most money in it by midnight Nov 7, wins, and all the money from both accounts goes into the treasury. Save all the trouble, time and expense of conducting elections, debates etc., spare us the lies and deceit and go with the foregone results.
Republicans forever!

Explain that to Governor Whitman.

(Meg Whitman spent $178 million. Jerry Brown spent $36 million. Brown won by 13 percentage points.)

 

[Bomb#20]

You're calling Thom Hartmann a liar, and Bernie Sanders. They keep saying the Court extended the right of corporations to donate, overturning a law passed by Congress.

Are you suggesting there's something implausible about a politician and a political preacher lying?

But no, I'm not calling them liars. I am offering no opinion on whether they are liars, or brainwashed idiots, or both. The fact remains that they are not authorities on what rights the Court extended. The Court is the authority on that question. And what they wrote is readily available for all to read, so why anyone would be stupid enough to take Hartmann's and Sanders' word on this point is a mystery.

It's irrelevant about the nitpicking details of the decision.

The complaint is that corporations should not have this power to influence elections because they don't have the same rights as individuals/people. I.e., they're not "people" and so should not have the same right to donate, or rather, there should be limits on how much they can donate.

No, that's not the complaint. The complaint is that the corporations shouldn't get to run their own ads because the complainers don't like being contradicted in public by their political opponents. When corporations print stuff the complainers want printed, the complainers like it that the First Amendment protects corporations. If you disagree, please show me one leftist who thinks the Supreme Court should have let Richard Nixon stop the New York Times from publishing the Pentagon Papers on the grounds that the New York Times is a non-human corporation.

Which is wrong, because even if corporations are something nonhuman, like aliens from another galaxy, they should still have the same right to donate as humans do. So it's silly to pound the table shouting that they are not people, as Bernie Sanders and others do.

Maybe, maybe not; but it's definitely silly because their people-hood or non-people-hood had nothing to do with the Court's actual ruling.

Donating to a candidate isn't an exercise of free speech/press. It's an exercise of giving money away.

Same thing.

Your opinion that that's the same thing is not binding on the rest of us.

 

[Derec]

Corporate personhood, where a corporation is considered a  legal person, is not the same as saying that corporations are "people", which are "natural persons" (a type of legal person) under the law. The legal distinction is real although it has been abused by "sovereign citizens", sometimes to hilarious effect.

What Romney was referring to was not corporate personhood, but that corporations are owned by people, and thus taxing them, in effect, taxes these people, not some faceless entity. You may disagree with Romney regarding his position on corporate taxes, but let's not confuse the issue by misrepresenting what he said.

 

[fast]

I have no fight in this game except to say corporations are not people. That's not to say they are not legal entities, and whether legal entities that are not people should or should not have donation privileges is another matter.

 

[Elixir]

Here's an idea - do away with elections and campaigning altogether. Simply have two bank accounts, each open to unlimited donations by individuals and corporations. Whichever candidate's bank account has the most money in it by midnight Nov 7, wins, and all the money from both accounts goes into the treasury. Save all the trouble, time and expense of conducting elections, debates etc., spare us the lies and deceit and go with the foregone results.
Republicans forever!

Explain that to Governor Whitman.

(Meg Whitman spent $178 million. Jerry Brown spent $36 million. Brown won by 13 percentage points.)

Obviously a miscarriage of justice there! Democrats and their rigged elections... my idea would do away with all that.