David Cobb: Human Rights in the Era of the Corporate Person

[marmar]

David Cobb was the Keynote Speaker at the Human Rights Day Celebration in Rochester, NY on November 30, 2011. This is the video of his talk. For more information on Move To Amend, visit www.movetoamend.org. In Rochester, visit www.movetoamendrochester.org.


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The fundamental thing we're talking about is this: the U.S. Constitution makes it clear that no part of the government can infringe upon the individual civil liberties of any of its citizens. And I as a civil libertarian support that principle and fight like hell anytime there are local, state, or federal laws that actually do infringe upon the rights on the people. There are many examples where that has happened. I believe that the USA PATRIOT Act for example is unconstitutional, on its face. I certainly know for a fact that the Jim Crow segregation laws that were passed at the state level were unconstitutional because they violated the rights of African-American citizens.
The point is this: I am not anti-corporation; I believe corporations should exist and should be allowed to engage in commerce. But I do not believe that corporations can ever legitimately walk into court and claim that they have some sort of inherent inalienable constitutional rights that have been violated by a local, state, or federal action. Because these artificial entities don't have inherent rights, only people do. Any rights that a corporation has must come from the democratic process. Corporations have legal rights, yes, but those are not inalienable inherent rights of natural law as recognized by the Constitution.
So corporate legal rights would be determined by things like contract law and their corporate charters, but corporate rights would not be the same inalienable rights that people have under the Bill of Rights and the U.S. Constitution. Corporate rights are up to local, state, and federal law to determine by the democratic process.
D.C.: That's exactly right. Yes, you've just nailed it. Corporations' rights can be described by their state or individual charter any bylaws; their rights can be described by virtue of election codes or other state laws. And business people can rely on those rights. But what corporations cannot claim is that these rights are inalienable under the U.S. Constitution. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.poclad.org/?pg=By_What_Authority&show=a110408.txt