Corporations as People?

Should corporations continue to be viewed as People? Post your thoughts here. If we've been viewing them as fictitious people, we can take that away state by state or through national law, or through the Supreme Court. Which would you rather see?

Saturday, March 10, 2012

Are Corporations Fictitious People?

According to the Supreme Court in 1819 (Dartmouth College v Woodward) corporations are to be given rights and responsibilities similar to natural people. Of course, there is a question about which rights and responsibilities in the Constitution should be afforded corporations. We all have rights and responsibilities, we must obey the law, we must abide by the Constitution, we should abide by natural law (according to Clarence Thomas), we should pay taxes (although the original Bill of Rights and subsequent Amendments didn't make that clear until the 20th C.). The general supposition was that corporations should have the responsibilities to pay tax, to operate by the laws of the United States (limited in number of states at the time) and in return have to rights to operate. The Court's thoughts were that by bringing in corporations as "fictitious people" one could bring them in to a code of conduct unknown in the old world. Through the years, the responsibilities of corporations have varied through state law and through the Court. There seems to have been some sliding. For instance, while we demand workplace safety and equal employment opportunity (using the 5th and 14th Amendments as a starter for argument), we in turn allow A Corporation to take certain monetary deductions from tax responsibility as a right. While real people are guaranteed freedom of political speech and assembly, corporations' abilities to do that have traditionally been negated somewhat by the hesitancy to call "commercial speech", "free speech".  They are not the same things. The current Court seems to believe that the Woodward decision sets precedent for corporations' speech rights as being equal to a natural person's free speech rights and obligations in the political arena. If a person would commit effort and treasure to speech, the corporation, according to the Court, can too.  Up comes the issue of limits, which the 5-4 Court seems to think should be unlimited in the Corporate case, and limited in the individual's situation. What would that take to amend this? Easy. A certification to the next Court to re-examine Dartmouth College v Woodward probably through a suit challenging individual's rights to limit campaign finance, but establish themselves as a fictitious corporation entitled to a SuperPac. Colbert showed how easy it is and millions of others have shown that's it's quite easy to set up a fictitious corporation for tax purposes. Let's have an INTELLIGENT conversation here.