Corporations are not people too.

[Skidmore]

I think this should be something we hammer on in terms of domestic policy in general. I was just listening to Ted Kennedy at a press conference on ROberts' nomination for SC. He said something about most of the SC decisions affecting FMLA and other like "people" laws have been argued based on commerce laws.

How can we go about stripping corporations of "personhood" and returning personhood to the individual citizen?

[SujiwanKenobee]

1. Agreed.

Anyone know the legal history/persons involved who first started this trend of corporation as "person" and why?

[Maddy McCall]

2. Santa Clara County v. Southern Pac.

Supreme Court decision that granted coporate personhood.

[wli]

3. time to pack the bench with justices who will revoke it

That is if/when we ever get integrity of the electoral system back.

[Skidmore]

4. Unfortunately, until the Dems quit feeding the corporate beast

I fear that addressing "personhood" will not be seen as an issue. Too many individuals have come to believe that the only good job is a corporate job--part of the MBA movement of the 80s. For all the crap about the small "entrepreneur" (another word I've come to detest hearing because * treats it like a person point of pride because he learned a word with more than 2 syllables), most people don't have a clue that you can actually work on your own.

[wli]

7. once the elections are unrigged more can be done

Until then, we're helpless.

[pnorman]

11. The problem is that it wasn't a SCOTUS decision itself.

I'll have to go over all the websearching I had done a while back, but it was more like a summary prepared by someone who was NOT authorized to make such an authorized interpretation. For obvious (and self-serving) reasons, the Establishment (and it's judicial flunkies) went along with that collosal MYTH.

The true tragedy was this: The post Civil War Populists were making great strides in in enacting much sorely needed social legislation at the STATE level; and bringing those states to a very high level of participatory democracy in the process. But at one stroke, that was all rendered "contrary to the Due Process provision of the 14th Amendment". Thereafter, social legislation had to be done mainly through "regulating Interstate Commerce". That was not only tortuous and sometimes offensive to common sense, but usualy created cumbersome bureaucracies. That such social legislation was anchored in legalistic quibbling rather than clearly perceived JUSTICE, made it CONSTANTLY vulnerable to challenge. And the legions of lawyers on both sided who fattened on this ........

pnorman

[moodforaday]

13. Not exactly so

According to Thom Hartmann ("Unequal Protection", chapter 1), the court didn't say that much. The "personhood" concept was written into the court documents by a clerk/court reporter.

I lent the book to a friend so can't quote or give details, but Hartmann got to the original document and had it analysed by lawyers. The clerk wrote an introductory piece, and in it, he claimed that the court said corporations were persons - but this claim was not made anywhere in the actual decision by the court, and what the clerk wrote had no legal force. It just so happened that the clerk was on corporate payroll (again, according to Hartmann).

I won't have the book back for a few weeks at least, but this is the gist.

[rman]

5. a good website on this subject:

www.reclaimdemocracy.org

excerpts from Corporate History
http://reclaimdemocracy.org/pdf/primers/hidden_corporate_history.pdf (PDF)

"Today, corporations wield immense power over our government, public lands, even our schools. But this was not the intent of our country’s founders."

"In 1776 we declared our independence not only from British rule, but also from the corporations of England that controlled trade and extracted wealth from the U.S. (and other) colonies. Thus, in the early days of our country, we only allowed corporations to be chartered (licensed to operate) to serve explicitly as a tool to gather investment and disperse financial liability in order to provide public goods, such as construction of roads, bridges or canals.
After fighting a revolution for freedom from colonialism, our country's founders retained a healthy fear of the similar threats posed by corporate power and wisely limited corporations exclusively to a business role. These state laws,many of which remain on the books today, imposed conditions such as these:"

- A charter was granted for a limited time.
- Corporations were explicitly chartered for the purpose of serving the public interest-- profit for shareholders was the means to that end.
- Corporations could engage only in activities necessary to fulfill their chartered purpose.
- Corporations could be terminated if they exceeded their authority or if they caused public harm.
- Owners and managers were responsible for criminal acts they committed on the job.
- Corporations could not make any political contributions, nor spend money to influence legislation.
- A corporation could not purchase or own stock in other corporations, nor own any property other than that necessary to fulfill its chartered purpose."

<snip>

"One of the most severe blows to citizen authority was seeded in the 1886 Supreme Court case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad. Though the court did not make a ruling on the question of “corporate personhood,” thanks to misleading notes of a clerk, the decision subsequently was used as “precedent” to hold that a private corporation was a "natural person." This meant that the 14th Amendment, enacted to protect rights of freed slaves, used to grant corporations Constitutional rights. Justices have since struck down hundreds of local, state and federal laws enacted to protect people from corporate harm based on this illegitimate premise."


"There can be no effective control of corporations while their political activity remains. To put an end to it will be neither a short nor an easy task, but it can be done."
-- President Theodore Roosevelt, 1910

========

Also see the documentary "The Corporation"
www.thecorporation.com

"150 years ago the business corporation was a relatively insignificant institution. Today it is all pervasive. Like the church, the monarchy and the communist party in other times and places, the corporation is today's dominant institution. This documentary examines the nature, evolution, impacts and possible futures of the modern business corporation.

In law, the corporation is a “person”. But what kind of person is it?

Considering the odd legal fiction that deems a corporation a “person” in the eyes of the law, this documentary employs a checklist, based on actual diagnostic criteria of the World Health Organisation and DSM IV, the standard tool of psychiatrists and psychologists. What emerges is a disturbing diagnosis."

[Skidmore]

6. Thanks for the link. nt

[whistle]

8. Corporations are an abomination

<snip>
IT'S TIME TO STOP THE CORPORATIST RACE TO THE BOTTOM
It's time to make the export and the elimination of American jobs the number one political issue in the 2004 campaign. It threatens the social fabric of the country, and represents everything that's wrong with excessive corporate power, the undue influence of the rich, the privatization of everything, and so-called 'free trade'. There is a massive political and psychological fraud being perpetrated against the American people, and it goes like this:

<more>
<link> http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/2003/09/15.html#a442

[pengu1n]

9. The real government

Caught this article on Haliburton. They appear to be the ones everyone is paying their taxes to.

Haliburton Corpwatch

<snip>
"When the survivors limped into the Al Taqaddum military base, they were expected to receive support from the Halliburton staff. Instead they got the cold shoulder. When the drivers tried to leave the country, they hit a roadside bomb and another Bosnian staff member was killed."
<snip>

When will these guys be stopped?


(this is my first link at DU - hope it is all ok...

[magellan]

10. 1886 - Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company

Where Capitalism took a wrong turn.

Here's a little blurb I found having to do with this and a book by David Korten called "The Post Corporate World: Life After Capitalism". In bold is Korten's argument against the SC's ruling; I don't know the history of having the ruling overturned or if this particular argument has been attempted.

Text of the 1886 Supreme Court decision, Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company, which gave corporations the same rights as people based on the 14th amendment to the Constitution. Key passages cited on p.185 of The Post-Corporate World are:

MR. CHIEF JUSTICE WAITE said: The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of opinion that it does.

The summary record includes the Court's findings that

The defendant Corporations are persons within the intent of the clause in section 1 of the Fourteen Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Korten then observes, "Thus it was that a two-sentence assertion by a single judge elevated corporations to the status of persons under the law, prepared the way for the rise of global corporate rule, and thereby changed the course of history."(p.185) He goes on to point out the legal contradiction implicit in corporate personhood. A corporation is the property of it shareholders. But it is also a legal person (technically, a "legal subordinate fiction"). With such "persons" being owned by others, a condition of slavery exists which is prohibited by the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution.

[baldguy]

12. Corporations are people. The USSC said so.

I the Republican hierarchy - Corporations come first, then embryos and fetuses. Normal flesh & blood human beings are third-class citizens, one step above slaves.