The rights enumerated, implied, or otherwise found to exist in this Constitution shall be construed as applying only to human persons. These rights specifically shall not be construed to apply to any non-living human construct, including corporations, partnerships, or any other construct prepared for any business, political, or social purpose.
There might also need to be some verbiage that prevents this amendment from undercutting the rights assigned to the various States.
The rights enumerated, implied, or otherwise found to exist in this Constitution shall be construed as applying only to human persons. These rights specifically shall not be construed to apply to any non-living human construct, including corporations, partnerships, or any other construct prepared for any business, political, or social purpose, except that those rights set forth in this Constitution which apply to the various States shall apply to the States.
It should be non-sentient, not non-living. With an Amendment you have to think long term, which means you should consider how such a law would apply to artificial intelligences, uplifted animals, or the genetically engineered/cybernetically enhanced descendants of humans. Maybe even aliens.
Pretty much the dumbest amendment ever, seriously. If passed the government would find a way to keep it from actually going into effect because the consequences would essentially be the end of the United States as a country.
You’re talking about overnight elimination of the property rights of every corporation in America, every LLC, every business partnership, pretty much every business period aside from sole proprietorships. Since the intentions of your amendment would be incompatible with the operation of our society, it just simply wouldn’t be enacted in any meaningful way. Of course, because of that fact it would never be passed.
This amendment is essentially too stupid to even merit further discussion.
Right – so, for example:
You don’t want organised churches to have freedom of religion.
The property of corporations could “be taken for public use, without just compensation”.
Under this amendment could Congress pass a bill that simply confiscated all land owned by General Electric, evict the company from those lands, and offer no compensation since they’d not have any right to due process? Could they pass a law requiring Google to house soldiers in their unused cubicles? Could they pass a law giving the FBI free reign of all corporate spaces since they’d no longer have any protections against unreasonable searches? Could they prevent NBC from broadcasting the evening news?
Organizations of scientists, doctors, lawyers, economists et cetera would no longer have any collective freedom of speech rights so they would have no protected right to use their importance as a collection of experts to release information to the public. Instead of say, the American Pediatric Society being able to release statements about things that are dangerous (say tobacco use in children), only individual pediatricians would have that right. Sure, government wouldn’t necessarily stop them, but they’d have no collective protections whatsoever.
Organized labor would also have no right to exist under these laws. Of course neither would any business aside from craft-level medieval style work so organized labor would just be a bunch of seamstresses getting together to bitch about the woman whose barn they use as their workspace.
But superpacs are OK? That your government is literally bought and paid for by large corporations, which control assets vastly beyond the reach of any individual, is OK? That the supreme court finds that corporations - which are supposed to be our servants, by the way - have a right to free speech that doesn’t permit any of this to be restrained is OK?
I would certainly end the rights of every corporation. That doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t be able to function, it just means they wouldn’t have any constitutional right to function.
If indeed their functioning is essential to the functioning of our society (and it certainly seems this is true), then we would pass laws that would enable them to function.
However - and this is the key - we could restrict their functioning in any way whatsoever that we found necessary. This is what we cannot now do.
In a housing co-op, you often own a share in the co-operative that entitles you to use a unit as a residence, but your right to have that residence is only as a virtue of being a member of the co-operative. In theory anyone living in a co-operative could find themselves homeless, as government seized their homes.
No one would take the massive risks involved in forming business ventures if the government could simply seize all your assets anytime it felt like it. In reality all your amendment would do is create a totalitarian police state in which the government is all powerful. You would destroy every large block of political power in the country aside from the bureaucracy of the government itself, what do you think happens in that power vacuum?
All the way back to the American Revolution, groups of concerned citizens banding together as a collective organization to make their interests heard have been important in our political structure. The fact that Super PACs have been created and et al. is potentially a problem, but you’re essentially talking about an amendment that would make it nigh impossible for anyone of like mind to meaningfully advance their position. Instead, everyone is isolated and weak before a government and bureaucracy whose power is massive.
I don’t care if the church as an entity has the right. The individuals who comprise the church have the right. If this is seen as inadequate, then the wording could be changed to provide a religious exception. After all, it isn’t the churches that are the problem.
Yes, unless restrained by statute. It would certainly motivate a massive change in corporate law, to invest more ownership (and hence accountability) in people.
Absolutely correct. We would presume a public interest in allowing them to speak, and that could be handled by statute. If their speech got out of hand, then they couldn’t assert a right to keep doing it.
There is no right for organized labor anyway. It is handled by statute.
The point is that if we so choose (and, for the most part, we WOULD so choose), we could continue with business as usual but with a flatly statutory basis for corporations and other entities, rather than a fundamental rights basis.
This would make our ability to restrain these entities when we needed to do so effectively unlimited.
Would it be abused? Probably. Are the conditions that presently prevail being abused? Without doubt.
This way, the corporations would be taken completely out of control. They would be our creatures again.
In theory that is true…more or less…at this level we definitely encounter the rights of individuals too.
But what is happening now? Millions of people are losing their homes as the corporations take them. In fact, an overall condition created by corporations running rogue has created conditions where a large fraction of the US population owes more on their home than it is worth, and it is actually a rational decision to stop making payments.
As far as that goes, if you are a tenant renting a property, in the vast majority of jurisdictions in the USA, you can be forced to move on the whim of your landlord, once adequate notice is given.
So this doesn’t really change anything, except to destroy the vast majority of the power that corporations wield. They’d still have the power of their money. That should be plenty of power for them. And superpacs…corporate lobbyist groups…the Buying of the Government… could all be ended.
There is also the idea that the ‘personhood’ of corporations, established to minimize investment risk and allow contracting and lawsuit capabilities, was in law for a couple centuries before someone decided to regard a corporation as a person for all purposes, including First Amendment rights. This may be a bit of overkill, and simple statutory deprivation of personal status for other than the specified commerical-law purposes of corporate personhood.might be sufficient.
Right, if you don’t want corporations funneling large amounts of money to Presidential elections just pass a constitutional amendment that says that. This amendment in its original text is stupid.
My answer to all of these is yes, except for the last one, and with the following qualifications.
Corporations are owned by people. If the government seizes corporate assets, this is effectively an undue taking from people. So the government would have to pay compensation…to the shareholders.
As for the last one, freedom of the press is enshrined in the First Amendment and applies to people. It would be an interesting question whether in the particular case of a news organization any of the rights invested in the individuals attach to the corporation to the extent that the corporation is functioning to permit the individuals to assert those rights. Clearly, it would not be my desire to restrain individuals in this fashion, but it would indeed be a legitimate question that would have to be addressed.
Honestly these threads are exhausting, I have participated in probably 4-5 threads on these forums in which people show they don’t really understand what corporations are, why they’re important, how they work, what the legal doctrine of “corporate personhood” is. Basically a lot of people who got upset of Citizens United but actually know nothing about the economy or corporations feel they have all these wonderful ideas to fix the world.
The OP shows this deep seated misunderstanding when he talks about making corporations “our creatures” again. Who exactly does the OP think currently control corporations? You do realize a corporation is just people, the inanimate parts of it have no will and no power.
Not so fast, corporate assets are currently owned by corporations. If you remove the corporate right to property I see no reason you can just assume the government would have to compensate shareholders for seizing that property. As far as the government could be concerned it is abandoned, as the legal entity that owned it has no ownership rights. Owning shares in a corporation does not specifically entitle you to any of the assets of the corporation.
How are you going to restrain a corporation statutorily when it has been found by the Supreme Court to have a right? You can’t do it; any attempt to do it will be found unconstitutional.
Corporate personhood, taken to the extreme we have taken it, is literally destroying our society.
So the best response…is to destroy corporate personhood.
These things could in principle happen. And passing this amendment or a close variant would make a LOT of laws and principles obsolete.
That, actually, is the explicit point…destroy corporate personhood.
So, quite obviously, there would have to be a transition…which would be handled statutorily…and would vest the individuals who own the corporation with the assets of the corporation for purposes of disposal, if that was necessary.
Such things could be handled statutorily, and would be handled statutorily…that would have to happen.