no difference between a human and a corporation

[Fresh_Start]

must be hard as brilliant as that.

So when was the last time a corporation gave birth, changed a diaper, saw a child off to school, saw a parent with alheizmers, had to chose not to care for its teeth because the kids needed school supplies?

When did the corporation get wounded and die of its injuries on the battlefield?

When did it serve a life sentence for a crime it committed? When did it get a lethal injection?

When does the corporation face judgment at the pearly gates (for those who believe in such things)?

[Wickerman]

1. Hell, when was the last time a Corporation paid taxes?

not to belittle a great post by overstatement of a problem.

:applause:

[PDJane]

2. Corporate personhood is a legal fiction.

All this decision does is make it very, very easy for the corporate 'person' to give money to their chosen candidate without all that messy fiddling around behind the scenes.

Why don't you just put little labels on the suits, the way they do on racers? That way, you'd at least know who was making the decisions.

[BrklynLiberal]

6. Yes. Those a-holes are pleading Freedom of Speech when they really want

freedom to purchase the govt.
Comnparing the giving of corporate money to free speech by an individual is the height of willful ignorance...and hypocrisy.

Ted Olson --- :puke: :puke: --- pled in support of McCain/Feingold under pres shit-for-brains, and now Olson is taking the opposite side, since the repukes are no longer in power.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Olson

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

32. +1

[armyowalgreens]

3. None of that disqualifies a corporation from "personhood"...

There are plenty of people who do not ever experience what you have described. But they are still persons.

What disqualifies the corporation is the fact that it is not an intelligent entity. It is a collection of minds. It lacks consciousness and therefore is not self aware.

[Fresh_Start]

10. all of us human beings share more characteristics

then any of us share characteristics with a corporation.

A corporation is not in any way equivalent with a human person.
When was the last time a human got a new brain, compared to when a corporation changed its leadership.

[armyowalgreens]

11. I'm not disagreeing with you. I just think you're argument is weak.

[Romulox]

14. His argument (when distilled) is that a human being is mortal, a "corporate person" is not...nt

[armyowalgreens]

15. Corporations are neither mortal nor immortal. They are not living beings...

They do not have the individual capacity for intelligence.

[Romulox]

17. Ummm...by definition, they are not mortal...

"They do not have the individual capacity for intelligence."

"Mortality" does not refer to the capacity for intelligence. :shrug:

[armyowalgreens]

19. That's why I said that they are not living beings, first.

Those were two different statements.


Not all living beings are "persons".

[Romulox]

22. The law currently treats corporations as "persons", though they are patently not.

That is the crux of this issues.

"Not all living beings are 'persons'. "

Right, but not all "legal persons" are living things. That's what this discussion is about.

[BrklynLiberal]

4. This is exactly the kind of ruling the RW Conservatives and other wackos have been waiting for

since the turn of the century....
Thom Hartmann has been arguing forever against Corporate Personhood...but it is like spitting inta a hurricane.

[DeadEyeDyck]

5. Not sure if I can see where you are going...

of course, a corporation is not an individual. No group of any sort is. But isn't a corporation made up of people and didn't those people take a crap, change their huggies, etc., etc.?

I own stock so I guess I am part of a corporation. I also have a heafty stock-option(vested) in the company I work for. And I do feel a direct connection to the ebb and flow of the market as it makes my net worth rise and fall. I also think the stock option is an excellent model because it makes small cogs like me work hard for the company's success. It turns a job into a club.

But I am not sure what you are trying to say so maybe I am off the mark.

[BrklynLiberal]

7. The point is that since a corporation is made up of stockholders, they do not have the right

WalMart is an excellent example of this. All the moves that WalMart made to increase its own profits contributed to the undermining of the American economy.

[TheKentuckian]

8. No, you are not the corporation and the corporation isn't you

I have no idea at all where any confusion would come from. Each individual is a person but the composite of you and others involved do not lump together to create a new person. Why would anyone think that their own personhood isn't enough?

[Fresh_Start]

9. each of those people individually have rights

they're rights should not be multiplied because they also participate in a corporation.

The corporation is not the supreme being created from its employees and stockholders.

[armyowalgreens]

13. Corporations should still have certain rights. Just as other groups have rights.

Athough, maybe "right" is not the correct word.

[BrklynLiberal]

23. A corp is entitled to the legal rights that incorporation bestows upon it, but NOT

the rights of a person, a citizen of the US.
No matter how you slice it, or what semantic tricks you want to pull...a corporation is NOT A PERSON!

[armyowalgreens]

40. Relax, I never said a corporation was a person.

[Romulox]

16. You're wrong. Our court has held that corporations are "persons" under the law.

It was not speaking of the aggregate rights of shareholders, but of the independent Constitutional rights of the "corporate person", which is indeed "an individual" as currently treated under the law.

[Dogtown]

30. The Court is wrong

and disingenuous.

If corporations are "persons", then some (with the appropriate "birth certificates") must also be citizens. By that logic, they should be allowed to cast a vote.

The comparison is silly, and is legalistic subterfuge used to justify allowing corporations to influence and control government, essentially robbing us of our votes.

Until Americans are willing to act as if this were truly the "home of the brave", we will continue to be chattel. I don't see that actually happening.

America is overdue for Balkanization. I'm beginning to believe it's inevitable, and that we'll see it soon.

[Romulox]

41. Agreed. nt

[BrklynLiberal]

35. Nope. You are wrong. That is not truly "settled" law.

http://www.poormojo.org/cgi-bin/gennie.pl?Rant+138+bi


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6499833&mesg_id=6500363

[Romulox]

42. LOL. It's "settled law" until the Court reverses itself.

The same as any other issue. :hi:

[Hannah Bell]

20. you, a person, holds stock in a corporation. the corporation isn't a person.

[Ikonoklast]

21. Then, as an owner of the company, if they do something illegal

you should be held responsible for its actions, if the SC grants rights to corporations equal that of a living citizen.

I say that an argument could be made that if a corporation kills someone, say through willfull negligence, every shareholder should be held personally responsible, whether they were aware of its criminal activity or not.

It's a slippery slope, and they want a line drawn where corporations can reap all the benefits od 'personhood', without any of the liabilities a living citizen would have in the exact same circumstances.

[Fresh_Start]

24. yes, thats exactly my concern

a corporation does not have equal consequences to us mere human persons.
It should not have equal standing under the law.

[Ikonoklast]

27. If more rights are granted to corporations, then more 'personal responsibilty' should be

carried by the owners, shareholders, and officers of the corporation for any illegal activity.

Anything else is creating a 'super' class of person, one which has all the benefits of personhood, but limited responsibilities.

I think a smart constitutional expert could make a case for such increased responsibility if the SC grants them expanded rights.

[BrklynLiberal]

39. I would bet a lot of money, if I had it, that those that are fighting for the rights

of corporations would fight to the bitter end AGAINST corporate responsibility.

[LatteLibertine]

12. It suits their agenda of pushing corporatism

nt

[bemildred]

18. Corporations cannot vote. They cannot run for office. They are legal fictions. nt

[Davis_X_Machina]

25. Nothing new, not a brainstorm of Scalia's....

...although obiter dictum the personhood of corporations for purposes of 14th amendment due process protections, as stated in Santa Clara Co. v. Southern Pacific Railroad has been settled law for over a century.

You may wish to have it revisited -- I certainly would -- or overturned, but it's not a judicial novelty of Scalia's.

[Fresh_Start]

26. yes, I believe that ruling basically set the stage for most

of the current disasters in our political environment.

So much for being a strict constructionist: he's just another corporate whore

[Davis_X_Machina]

29. Well, it's stare decisis of a sort...

...and while Scalia's known to practice 'outcome-based jurisprudence' when he wants to, here he gets to bow to precedents, because they point already to where he wants to go.

[BrklynLiberal]

33. Not truly "settled" law..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Clara_County_v._Southern_Pacific_Railroad

Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company, 118 U.S. 394 (1886) was a United States Supreme Court case dealing with taxation of railroad properties. The case is most notable for the obiter dictum statement that juristic persons are entitled to protection under the Fourteenth Amendment.

For its opinion, the Court consolidated three separate cases: Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company, California v. Central Pacific Railroad Company, and California v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company.

California had created a law which provided for taxation of railroad property. The taxpaying railroads challenged this law, based on a conflicting federal statute of 1866 which gave them privileges inconsistent with state taxation (14 Stat. 292, §§ 1, 2, 3, 11, 18). This statutory question was the heart of the case and the basis of the Court's ruling. Nonetheless, other constitutional issues had been raised below, including claims that the taxes violated equal protection. The lower court had entered judgment for the railroads, holding that the tax assessments were void because they improperly included property which was outside the jurisdiction of the agency that assessed the tax.<1>

The Supreme Court never reached the equal protection claims. Nonetheless, this case is sometimes incorrectly cited as holding that corporations, as juristic persons, are protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.<2><-/b>

The question of whether corporations were persons within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment had been argued in the lower courts and briefed for the Supreme Court, but the Court did not base its decision on this issue.

However, before oral argument took place, Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite announced:

"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 the opinion that it does."<3>

This quotation was printed by the court reporter in the syllabus and case history above the opinion, but was not in the opinion itself. As such, it did not technically - in the view of most legal historians - have any legal precedential value. However, the Supreme Court is not required by Constitution or even precedent to limit its rulings to written statements.

The persuasive value of Waite's statement did influence later courts, becoming part of American corporate law without ever actually being enacted by statute or formal judicial decision.<5>For these reasons, some believe it to be literally an unprecedented extension of constitutional rights to US corporations.<2>

<snip>

Also check out Thom Hartmann...
http://www.poormojo.org/cgi-bin/gennie.pl?Rant+138+bi

[Davis_X_Machina]

37. Dicta + the passage of time = precedent...

...in practice, if not in theory.

{on edit} In some ways, it's more durable because it's just obiter dicta. It's both law, and not-law at the same time, and that makes it a hard target to hit.

[BrklynLiberal]

28. When Is a Corporation Like a Freed Slave?

Corporate lawyers are paid to create the illusion that corporations...when it is to their advantage only...are entitled to all the rights of a person...but of course, not to the responsiblities.

When Is a Corporation Like a Freed Slave?

http://barryyeoman.com/articles/personhood.html

<snip>
Though corporate personhood is now thoroughly ingrained in U.S. constitutional law, it would have been a foreign notion to the founders. For much of the nation's first century, corporations were seen as a means to an end, not unlike associations. They were "chartered," or called into existence, by the states, and their charters could be revoked at any time (a legal possibility now back in vogue among activists in several states); they were not considered "persons" until after the Civil War, when business magnates began to avail themselves of the 14th Amendment's antidiscrimination protections. In the landmark 1886 Supreme Court case Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific, a railroad company refused to pay a special county tax in California, arguing (much as sludge hauler Synagro would do in Pennsylvania more than a century later) that to treat it differently from everyone else violated its constitutional rights. Speaking from the bench, Chief Justice Morrison Waite announced, "The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the 14th Amendment...applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does."

After Santa Clara, federal judges began granting more and more rights to nonliving "persons." In 1922, the Supreme Court ruled that the Pennsylvania Coal Co. was entitled to "just compensation" under the Fifth Amendment because a state law, designed to keep houses from collapsing as mining companies tunneled under them, limited how much coal it could extract. In 1967 and 1978, businesses prevailed in Supreme Court cases citing the search-and-seizure provisions of the Fourth Amendment as protection against fire and workplace safety inspections.

Corporate lawyers have also taken a shine to the First Amendment. In 1978, the Supreme Court agreed with corporations claiming that the state could not limit their political spending in an antitax campaign. Almost two decades later, a federal appellate court struck down a Vermont law requiring that milk from cows treated with bovine growth hormone be so labeled. Dairy producers had a First Amendment right " not to speak," the court said. In California, Nike invoked the First Amendment to fight a lawsuit arguing that the company's public relations materials misrepresented sweatshop labor conditions.

Most recently, the Retail Industry Leaders Association has relied on the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause to fight Maryland's Wal-Mart law, designed to force the company to expand its spending on employee health care. The retail group has also sued Suffolk County, New York, which last fall passed a similar ordinance aimed at nonunionized supermarkets.

<snip>

[Davis_X_Machina]

31. Al Gore had a piece on the juridical personhood...

..of corporations in his book The Assault on Reason, if I remember correctly. There have been sporadic efforts to address the anomaly by legislation from time to time, but never with much success.

[BrklynLiberal]

34. Gee...You wonder if it has anything to do with the corporate dominance of govt???

[YoungAndOutraged]

36. Republicans are exactly the type of people who ought to be against this

A corporation is a group of people, and the right's always going on about how there is no such thing as groups or society. Why is it different when it comes to corporations?

[BrklynLiberal]

38. It is called hypocrisy. Ted Olson pleaded in support of McCain/Feingold when shit-for-brains was

president. Now he is pleading the opposite side. It is called the whatever-the-hell-suits-them-best-today philosophy of life and law.