Corporate personhood should not be a novel concept in a liberal forum

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

The widespread DU discussion of corporate person-hood as if it's something that started in 2010 is odd. It's a big deal and a very old deal.

Corporate person-hood is a central problem in American life and has been since at least 1886.

This is one of our ancient progressive struggles, not breaking news.

The general concept is enshrined on the very first page of the US Legal Code:

1 U.S.C. §1

"In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, unless the context indicates otherwise-- the words "person" and "whoever" include corporations, companies, associations, firms, partnerships, societies, and joint stock companies, as well as individuals;"

http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/1/1.html

Corporations (and other types of associative entities) must have some de facto person-hood insofar as they can enter into contracts, be able to sue people for not honoring contracts, etc..

That, the limited 1819 state of things, is not very controversial.

The problem arises when that person-hood is expanded beyond the bare minimum legal fiction of person-hood that is requisite to corporations being able to act on par with individuals as economic entities.

Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad (1886) held that the person-hood of being able to enter into contracts meant that corporations are covered as persons by the 14th Amendment. This has always been one of our most controversial Supreme Court decisions. The 14th Amendment is very powerful and broad.

The downsides of over-extrapolation of corporate person-hood are endless. One famous one is that corporations cannot go to jail for crimes like negligent homicide but individual corporate officers who commit negligent homicide don't go to jail either because it's the corporation's fault.

(There was a pip of a negligent homicide trial involving Ford Motors employees/officers who knowingly went ahead with the flammable Ford Pinto. Everyone was acquitted because it was really Ford inc. that was doing it. Ford inc. was, however, never tried in criminal court because it's not THAT much of a person.)

[treestar]

1. Other countries have them too

Or call them Limited Liability Companies. Yet one does not see their demise.

[FreakinDJ]

6. Other Countries don't give them "Rights"

UK Law (were much of US law is formulated from) for one defines them quite clearly as "Entities"

[AllyCat]

2. Most here understand this has been around for a long time. The problem

is that this entrenches it even further. Many have argued that it started in 1819. We can still be mad about this, even if it started long ago.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

5. I am all for being mad

But the endless posts about how the SCOTUS just created this monster of corporate person-hood are foolish.

And it is extra foolish for folks to attack long-time opponents of corporate person-hood as corporate stooges for saying it was not invented this week.

The daily-hate witch-hunt kids-playing-soccer thing is fricking tedious...

[FreakinDJ]

9. 1886 Court - "Most Overturned Supreme Court"

In 1886 the supreme court justices were Samuel F. Miller, Stephen J. Field, Joseph P. Bradley, John M. Harlan, Stanley Matthews, William B. Woods, Samuel Blatchford, Horace Gray, and chief justice Morrison. R. Waite. Never heard of a one of them? These men subjected African Americans to a century of Jim Crow discrimination; they made corporations into a vehicle for the wealthy elite to control the economy and the government; they vastly increased the power of the Supreme Court itself over elected government officials. How quaint they are forgotten names. In all fairness, Justice Harlan dissented from the infamous Plessy v. Ferguson decision <163 U.S. 537 (1896)>, which, as he said, effectively denied the protection of the 14th Amendment to the very group of people (former slaves and their descendants) for whom it was designed.

http://www.iiipublishing.com/afd/santaclara.html

[MercutioATC]

3. THANK YOU!

I can't believe the number of people here who act like the SCOTUS just created some new issue.

[Xipe Totec]

4. If they incorporate in Guantanamo, are companies still persons?

Because some human beings presently located there are not persons, according to the same Supreme Court.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

8. Al Queada fucked up... AlQueadatron LLC would have taken over the world by now

[sharesunited]

7. Fiction's Fool.

A corporation isn't real
It doesn't think, it doesn't feel
A legal fiction, an ideal
By right should serve the commonweal

And when it contravenes this task
Then all of us must duly ask
If law shall be a human tool
Or people play the fiction's fool.

[Learning Nomad]

10. But, this post doesn't fit in with mass hysteria, and makes sense

I therefore question your motives for posting it. ;-)

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

20. LOL. You'll have to take a number

:hi:

[BrklynLiberal]

11. Slavery was around for a longtime too..but that does not mean we should not fight this

issue. It may have been around since at least 1886, but aside from Thom Hartmann, I never heard anyone discuss publicly.
If treating it like a new issue is the only way to get it overturned, I am all for that.

The Lewis Powell "memo" should have been publicised decades ago..and anyone in the Federalist Society should never have been allowed on the Supreme Court. The main goal of the Federalists is to maintain the power of corporations in this country...

Great information available if you listen to the "Thom Hartmann on Corporate Personhoods" video in the political videos forum
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x426559

The court did not actually grant corporations personhood..in fact it was denied. It was the coverpage that misled many into thinking it supported personhood.

Hartmann explains this in the video.

It was not until a later court used that cover page to make a decision that the actual precedent was set.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

12. Of course it must be fought, and with an understanding of what it is

I am a life long Democrat primarily because of the Supreme Court. SCOTUS matters.

Unfortunately even in our best days we have never had a court willing to reign in this crap.

But we keep trying.

[BrklynLiberal]

14. Have you watched the Hartmann video? It is amazing.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x426559

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

13. I do not think it is a novel concept here

Over time I have read many many threads about it.

But people join DU daily and there's a lot of catch-up to do if you haven't been playing inside Liberal baseball for a long time.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

15. True, and I am sure my statements are overly bold as usual, but...

True, and I am sure my statements are overly bold as usual, but I am on my last nerve with being accused of being a corporate whore for disagreeing on factual grounds with statements like, "Don't you get it? The Supreme Court just ruled a corporation is a person."

Hence the OP.

[FarCenter]

16. Democratic Party is the party of trial lawyers, not corporate lawyers?

[jwirr]

17. An analyst should look at corporate campaign spending and how

it effected elections between 1886 and the 1970s when it was limited. Of course I think the robber barons were mild compared to todays corps.

[adamuu]

18. I noticed it too. Try to be patient

We're a smart bunch, and we're interested. That's more than you can say about many other groups of people.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

19. You are right, of course.

And ignorance is no crime... we are all ignorant of all sorts of things.

But I draw the line at nasty, contentious ignorance. The must not be anti-factual loyalty tests.

You can see throughout the board that people who know better about aspects of this case are silent because they don't want to be the topic of one of our daily-hates.

[struggle4progress]

21. This is a misleading post. The Court extended the first amendment rights of corporations

to bring the rights of the corporations more in line with the rights of natural persons. More precisely, although corporations are creatures that exist only subordinate to enabling legislation, the Court decided that corporations, once brought into existence according to such legislation, have inalienable rights to influence elections. It is a novel view, which has not been shared by either Congress or the Courts for at least a century, and it ignores the hard-fought struggles of the Gilded Age against the political power of the great Trusts

It is as if the Golem of Prague, once animated, were entitled by law to sit in the counsels of government

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

22. It is not misleading

The OP makes no claim that the doctrine was not further expanded last week.

There are many dozens of threads and hundreds or thousands of posts discussing the doctrine of corporate person-hood as if it were some out-of-the-blue thing enunciated by the SCOTUS for the first time last week.