'Corporations Are People' Is Built on a 19th-Century Lie | Hacker News Reader

'Corporations Are People' Is Built on a 19th-Century Lie

theatlantic.com

13 pointselsewhen11 comments

If corporations were people, they would be subject to things like the 3 strikes law and the death penalty. People don't get the chance to simply pay fines for harming people.

The employees of corporations are absolutely subject to things like the 3 strikes law and the death penalty for things they do for the corporation. So it makes sense that they have the same rights when they do things for the corporation.

It would be inconsistent to say: If you do something in the employment of a corporation you have same duties as anyone who acts on his own, but none of the rights.

Yes but, if corporations themselves are legally persons it should be the corporation that is tried for murder, and potentially sentenced to death. I'm not sure how you'd imprison a corporation under the 3 strikes law, but I leave that as an exercise for the Supreme Court

Otherwise they are wanting the rights of a person with none of the obligations and thus should not have them.

The problem here is pseudo-philosophical at most but if there’s an easy answer, it’s definitely not to interpret the metaphor literally.

If the entities are exchangeable (as you treat them) then the premise void. Are you sure you understand the problem? Exchanging one for the other may work in semantics but not in physical reality, because only one of them is physically real.

That's not true. If a corporation of people borrows money from you, and doesn't pay you back, you can't pursue repayment from them. The "corporation" is bankrupt, because it gave its (your) money to its employees or owners, who are not liable.

Sorry, but you essentially say "it must be different because it's regulated by different legal norms", and it is a nice example of logical fallacy. I'm, by the way, don't have any stakes in this debate (I'm not a US citizen), but the fact that your statement is built on sand is clearly visible from across the Atlantic (and I don't mean the magazine).

If it is so clear, why didn't you bother to explain what you are saying instead of just stating what your position?

When you say "if corporations were people they would be subject to [things physical persons subject to in the US]", you insist that if A is legally equivalent to B in context C(0), it must be equivalent also in any context C(n), but there's no sound logic to support this claim. Legal norms are not meant to reflect some inherent nature of things, they are nothing more than conventional agreements which take (and they must take) into account many nuances, concomitant circumstances, and context. So A can be legally treated as B in one situation, and not as B in another and that's just absolutely fine. (Laws of all countries are full of such things, and generally it is good, otherwise many laws would be either unbearable, or unenforceable.) That's why an "if this then that" argument cannot stand here.

P.S. Sorry, if my previous comment wasn't clear. It was for me, so I assumed it is for others - it happens with me.

The whole point of this is that corporations have all the advantages of people with none of the disadvantages. You seem to be arguing semantics of how things are at the moment, when the entire point is the inconsistency to which the metaphor is applied.

Let them be people, with all of the liabilities, responsibilities, and legal obligations as people. Otherwise what are we really talking about? The rights and privileges of personhood, but without any of the accountability? How absurd it is.

Indeed, the faux precedent in the Southern Pacific case would go on to be used by a Supreme Court that in the early 20th century became famous for striking down numerous economic regulations, including federal child-labor laws, zoning laws, and wage-and-hour laws. Meanwhile, in cases like the notorious Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), those same justices refused to read the Constitution as protecting the rights of African Americans, the real intended beneficiaries of the Fourteenth Amendment. Between 1868, when the amendment was ratified, and 1912, the Supreme Court would rule on 28 cases involving the rights of African Americans and an astonishing 312 cases on the rights of corporations.

Absurd!

What this shows is that judicial decisions are not based on "lies" or anything else. They are opinions; judges make decisions and work backwards toward reasons. The very existence of dissenting opinions shows that any case can be decided any way a justice wants. In the 19th Century, that meant that justices took away rights that the 13-15th Amendment tried to to protect.

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