Corporations Aren't People

[desert_fox 32]

It's a perversion of personhood. Corporations should have rights as pertaining to a business but not as a person. There is a difference. The way the laws are currently established, a corporation, while enjoying individual rights cannot be held criminally liable for breaking the law. How do imprison a corporation for criminal activity?

Well corporations cant get married for instance.

They can sue, be sued, enter into contracts...etc...just like people can. Break the law and they will go after the presidents, CEO, CFO etc as required...just like they did in Enron and WorldCom...the people in charge were breaking the law.

Guess it wont matter to Ken Lay anymore though.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

It's a perversion of personhood. Corporations should have rights as pertaining to a business but not as a person. There is a difference. The way the laws are currently established, a corporation, while enjoying individual rights cannot be held criminally liable for breaking the law. How do imprison a corporation for criminal activity?

Well corporations cant get married for instance.

They can sue, be sued, enter into contracts...etc...just like people can. Break the law and they will go after the presidents, CEO, CFO etc as required...just like they did in Enron and WorldCom...the people in charge were breaking the law.

Guess it wont matter to Ken Lay anymore though.

... corporations are asserting that they -- and only they -- should stand side-by-side with humans in having access to the Bill of Rights. Nike asserted before the Supreme Court last year, as Sinclair Broadcasting did in a press release last month, that these corporations have First Amendment rights of free speech. Dow Chemical in a case it took to the Supreme Court asserted it has Fourth Amendment privacy rights and could refuse to allow the EPA to do surprise inspections of its facilities. J.C. Penney asserted before the Supreme Court that it had a Fourteenth Amendment right to be free from discrimination -- the Fourteenth Amendment was passed to free the slaves after the Civil War -- and that communities that were trying to keep out chain stores were practicing illegal discrimination. Tobacco and asbestos companies asserted that they had Fifth Amendment rights to keep secret what they knew about the dangers of their products. With the exception of the Nike case, all of these attempts to obtain human rights for corporations were successful, and now they wield this huge club against government that was meant to protect relatively helpless and fragile human beings. - Thom Hartman.

I'm not sure if many Americans fully understand the ramifications of assigning legal personhood to corporations. The above examples show the obvious absurdity in such a fallacy.

Edited July 6, 2006 by StevenJinky

[Artegal 1]

Here is the problem in the logic of this anti-corporation proposal.

1--Corporations are an entity composed of people, and a US Chartered Corporations would be composed of US Citizens. Citizens of this country have Constitutional Rights. An entity of people does not lose individual rights of the people within the group, that is why there is the clause about freedom of Assembly.

2--If a Corporation were to lose all rights that the individual enjoys, then as an entity of people the same as a Club, School, Church, Religious Group, Political Party, Union, Political Action Committee, PAT, Trade group, or other association of peoples--then could see their rights also denied by what you are proposing. But they can't because freedom of Religion, Expression, Speech, Assembly and Association are guaranteed. These rights would be meaningless if rights only applied to the individual. Class Action suits and rights of communities or other organized groups could be lost.

3--Calling for the exclusion of corporations would be unconstitutional, since it would be the exclusion of one type of group. And this has been thoroughly unconstitutional as its exclusionary and discriminatory. Like IMBRA that only enforces a law on Marriage Brokers, a law that would only hold organizations or entities of citizens called or chartered as a Corporation would be exclusionary.

4--If you did exclude Corporations from the constitution--then you are in effect denying them and the people (citizens) they represent likewise individual rights. The corporation does not exist in and of itself--it’s a group of individuals by construction. But assuming you wanted to deny rights of citizens that are organized--then wouldn't then make these entities even further outside the scope of law. Take for example an illegal alien or other alien that is not a conditional or permanent resident. The individuals in this case, though normally by default are afforded the constitutional protections, could and do escape justice in our system by virtue of not being a citizen and therefore excluded from our laws and systems of justice. If a corporation is excluded, then the corporation could say that since its rights have been denied--then it is in effect a non-citizen or second class citizen--and therefore not beholden to the US Government or the Country at all. I could see corporations seeking safe haven in off shore locales such as the Bahamas, Caiman islands, or Bermuda.

5--Tax revenues would fall as there is the issue of taxation without representation. An entity denied due process, rights, and representation could argue that they are not subject to the taxation of a system that is exclusionary. This would make the corporation not unlike the colonial land grant systems of the pre-independence America. This system is also why Indian reservations are not taxed.

6--The constitution technically is a document that should and has always been successful at granting rights that people and entities (group of people) enjoy. The exclusionary amendments have failed, i.e. prohibition of alcohol. Other totalitarian societies make constitutions that state what the people cannot do--and not what rights or recourse or guarantees they have. This is why our democracy has been more successful than others. We are inclusionary and not exclusionary.

7--Hold the heads of organizations accountable for the actions of the corporation--because the corporation does not commit any act without the will or mandate of a person. Again the entity is not in and of itself. Someone and individual or group of individuals (or conspirators) is/are responsible.