An article on
the Huffington Post page traces the history of corporate personhood back to the 19th Century Gilded Age and the reaction of America's elite to the Paris Commune of 1871.
The Paris Commune was the first international incident followed daily in the United States. While President Barack Obama complains about the 24-hour news cycle today, its roots stretch back to Cyrus Field's transcontinental telegraph cable, which allowed the elites of America to focus intently on the two-month uprising and ultimate slaughter of thousands of Parisians. Cyrus Field's brother and his family were in Paris at the time, and a third brother, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Field, obsessively tracked the news back in the states. It was the Paris uprising that transformed Stephen Field from a mundanely corrupt judge in the paid service of the railroads to a zealous crusader for all corporations, with the aim of suppressing what he and other leaders saw as the threat of democracy from below.
The authors diverge from the usual historical account of how a Supreme Court decision was
interpreted to grant privileges of personhood to corporations:
The common understanding of how the corporation became a legal person says that a Supreme Court reporter of decisions erroneously said as much in a case summary and that error became an unremovable stain, coloring every decision after. But that reading of history whitewashes what was, in fact, a coordinated effort to win citizenship for corporations.
They go on with a discussion of the history of the concept of the corporation, which had the original purpose of limiting the liability of investors. Justice Field delivered a number of minority opinions which at least implied that corporations, which had previously been regarded as
artificial persons under the law, had many of the rights of
natural persons, i.e., citizens:
The Louisiana Legislature, then controlled by a majority coalition of African Americans and white Reconstructionists known as "Radical Republicans," had passed a law insisting that all butchers move their business south of New Orleans, so the butchers' entrails didn't pollute the city's water supply. The Court upheld the law, and the city's pattern of repeated cholera outbreaks stopped cold. Field argued, however, that it was a corporation's God-given right to dump pig intestines wherever it saw fit, regardless of the public health consequences or laws on the books
Justice Field was as corrupt as today's Justice Clarence Thomas; he was heavily invested in railroads and other industries, and handed down decisions in favor of those industries, even when there was a clear conflict of interest. Congress allowed Supreme Court justices to sit in on lower, circuit court decisions. When Field sat the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in California, he inserted language in his decisions stating that corporations were persons.
Field lost a chance to hand down a decision stating that corporations were persons in a suit by San Mateo (California) against the Southern Pacific Railroad when the county settled out of court.
The settlement ended the Supreme Court case and denied Field one chance to enshrine personhood into law, but he was soon given another. In 1886, Santa Clara County sued Southern Pacific Railroad in a similar case, and the company again asserted its personhood. In fact, whether Southern Pacific was a citizen was irrelevant to the particular dispute, which was decided on technical issues of tax law that applied equally to a business or a person. But the Court reporter, John Chandler Bancroft Davis, who was himself financially intertwined with the railroads, wrote the following in his summary of the decision: "The defendant Corporations are persons within the intent of the clause in section I of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which forbids a state to deny to any person equal protection of the laws."
Davis usually takes the rap for establishing corporate personhood; but, Field was known to closely 'micromanage' Davis' decisions, and he had a definite interest in the case, being an investor in Southern Pacific Railroad. Field cited the 1886 decision in another case in 1888; Field inserted language, which had no bearing on the case at hand which stated that a "
private corporation is included under the designation of 'person' in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, Section I." And the rest, as they say, is history.
The pernicious effects of the decision were felt immediately; important legislation protecting worker rights could be overturned because it interfered with the 'rights' of the corporate 'persons,' which were now more important than that of workers.
That precedent of granting corporations the rights of
natural persons was extended in succeeding Supreme Court decisions. It led to the infamous
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision, passed by a 5-4 majority led by Chief Justice John Roberts, which enshrined into law the absurd notion that limiting contributions by corporations was a denial of First Amendment Free Speech rights.
Read more at:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/12/corporate-citizenship-corporate-personhood-paris-commune_n_1005244.html
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
