Corporate Personhood

I guess what I don't get now is: why does a corporation have to be identified as a "person" in order to be sued? Said corporation still has assets, can still hire a lawyer on it's behalf (paid for by shareholders/CEO??), can still pay out damages etc. Saying it is a person, then not granting it EVERY right that a living person has seems stupid.Like i said in the other thread, I'm no lawyer so there's probably a lot of legal mumbo jumbo that I just don't get and I won't be much help in this thread. My main point was that due to this "personhood", corporations are allowed to buy off politicians and sway what laws are enacted.

It doesn't. Corporations existed before they were granted limited rights of personhood, and corporations owned property and were subject to suit for their liabilities as well. Let's take that one at a time.No, corporations aren't allowed to buy off politicians. In fact, a corporation actually has less direct influence with politicians than people do because corporations are forbidden from donating to campaigns or political parties. So, as I discussed above, corporations actually do not have all the rights of personhood. And, obviously, no person has the right to buy off politicians either. This is called bribery and is a felony.Second, I'm actually hard-pressed to see a legitimate reason to prohibit corporations from spending their own money as they see fit to try to influence the political process. The First Amendment says, "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press...." It doesn't say people have the right to freedom of speech. It says Congress cannot abridge the freedom of speech. There's no mention whatsoever of who the speaker is. By its very terms, nowhere in the First Amendment is the freedom of speech limited to people.The basic idea behind freedom of speech is that the remedy for speech that you disagree with is not to restrict that speech but rebut it with speech of your own in the marketplace of ideas. Obviously, this idea is the same whether the speaker is a corporation or an actual person. Speech is speech regardless of who the speaker is.Let me ask you this: what is it that you object to, that corporations are allowed to advocate for positions that you disagree with or that corporations are allowed to advocate for positions at all? Would you object to an organization promoting the First Amendment running ads against Rick Santorum? Would you object to an abortion rights organization running ads against Rick Perry? Or do you simply object that corporations have too much money available to spend in attempting to influence an election?

And, of course, all these problems are easily solved by not recognizing non-people things as people.

And, of course, money isn't speech, regardless of who's spending it.Jon

Well, the recent Supreme Court case, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 1 (2010), wasn't about a corporation wanting to donate money to a PAC. It involved an organization that wanted to run its own television commercial. Are you going to try to argue that speech isn't speech, or that a political commercial isn't speech because the organization had to spend money to air it?

But that's corporate personhood - the ability of a corporation to appear before the court as a discreet entity that can own property and delegate agency.You keep misunderstanding me. I'm not saying that corporate personhood somehow implies the ability to sue a corporation. I'm informing you that "corporate personhood" means the ability of a corporation to appear in court and be sued. They're inextricable because they're the same thing. No, that's incorrect. That's one court's interpretation of the consequences of corporate personhood. That's not personhood itself. Personhood itself is the legal fiction that allows Coca-Cola to designate a lawyer to appear in court on its behalf. Absent that fiction, you could no more sue Coca-Cola or Walmart than you can sue the Mafia.

That's not what "legal personhood" means. Next!

Without legal personhood, no, it actually can't do any of those things. Without personhood it has no assets, so it cannot hire a laywer. Without personhood it can't delegate agency so a lawyer can't represent its members; the lawyer would have to be hired by and represent all the members individually. With no assets it can't make remedy; with no remedy, there's nothing for which to sue.Absent legal personhood a corporation doesn't exist before the law. There's nothing to bring a suit against. What does personhood have to do with that? That seems more like a consequence of just having a shitton of money.

You are misinforming me.The term corporate personhood refers to any of the rights normally granted to humans that are granted to corporations, including the right to hold property, enter into contracts, and appear in court (as defendant or plaintiff). You are using the term to apply specifically to the right to appear in court. I think the more expansive definition is the more common usage.See Corporate personhood - WikipediaHistorically, corporations were first allowed to appear in court and hold property. These things were essential in order for corporations to be able to exist and do business. It was only later that the fourteenth and other amendments were applied to corporations granting them additional rights.My point is that "personhood" of this type is a legal fiction that is not necessarily tied to any other of the rights that real humans have. We are not forced to grant corporations first amendment protections just because we allow the corporation to appear in court or to hold property. I think you are letting the tail wag the dog. More correctly, business entities have certain abilities/responsibilities granted to them that we collectively refer to as personhood.The difference may seem rather nitpicky, but if the discussion is whether it is inevitable that corporations must be allowed to have certain rights other than those that are absolutely required allow the corporation to conduct business, I think the difference is a nit that needs picking.Edited by NoNukes, : Reverse tail and dog. Sigh.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Wow, when I read this I nearly fell off the floor. Sorry - although the letter of the law may state this, they circumvent it with PACs and things.From Top Contributors to Barack Obama, 2008 Cycle | OpenSecrets: So when I read, hypothetically if you will, that Big Oil threw 8 gazillion dollars at the Republican candidate and 3 gazillion to the Democrat to "hedge their bet", and then see who ever gets elected bend down and kiss Big Oil's ass - this doesn't get translated into kick-backs and warm smarmy rules to allow these Big Oil corporations to continue to buttfuck the USA?Edited by xongsmith, : escape clause

So? Who cares? Absolute bullshit. 100% Crap.Any corporation is made up of people. People on top of people on top of other people.There are plenty of real people to sue in a corporation without pretending the corporation is a person of its own.

Well apart from the fact that the corporation probably has more money, there is the problem that responsibility in a corporation is diffuse. Suppose you buy a product that malfunctions and mains you, I'll wait here while you do that ... Whom do you sue? The guys who put it together? But they were just following the manual saying how to put it together. The guy who wrote the manual? Got his information from the designer of the product. The designer? Died two years ago in a car crash. The CEO? Joined the company after you bought the product. The guy who was CEO when the product was designed? Knows nothing at all about engineering, but repeatedly told his employees that maiming people was bad and should be avoided. And so forth. There may not even be one particular person who is verifiably to blame, but if there is it's going to be darn difficult to (a) find him (b) prove it.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Making something a legal person is not making it a natural person.

Just make the head boss legally responsible by default, regardless of when he came on or how much hand he had in the making of the product, dumping of the toxic waste, etc.It then falls on him to prove that someone else is more responsible than he is. If he can't do that, then he's the one who goes to court.JonEdited by Jon, : Coding error

Well typically that's not going to be very difficult. What's Plan B?It's just much easier to hold the corporation responsible. Is it important to find scapegoats, or is it better that the injured party should be able to get compensation without engaging the services of Hercule Poirot?