Could Congress pass a law saying “No corporation should be assumed to have any rights constitutionally delineated to persons” or is there something in US law or jurisprudence that would nullify such a law?
I’ve not seen any cases that deal with the issue, probably because it’s never been tried. But consider this:
It would make freedom of the press set out in the First Amendment pretty well useless. If CNN down to your local newspaper can’t claim the protection of the First Amendment, then governments could shut them down pretty easily.
It would also deprive any corporation charged with an offence of the protections of the 4th, 5th and 6th Amendments, so that they would not have any constitutional rights to a free and fair trial.
Given the consequences, I think it likely that the courts would not view such a law with favour. But I’d certainly like to hear the views of our US law dopers.
It seems to have mostly come into existence via the court system rather than legislation. It seems to have mostly started originally with the question of what freedoms a university or college has. Newspaper freedoms might have come later because–I believe–the first American newspapers were usually the output of a single proprietor. Don’t quote me on that.
Interesting point. It would need to be understood that while corporations shouldn’t be assumed to have the rights that people have, this doesn’t mean no corporation ever does have any of those rights. The freedom of the press guaranteed by the Constitution gives us independent reason to treat corporations as having a certain freedom–the freedom to publish whatever they wish to publish.
I don’t understand why corporations are charged with offenses. Doesn’t it really come down to offenses committed by people?
Suing corporations I can make sense of (sometimes no one person did anything they should be found civilly liable for, but the organization as a whole did due to its policies and procedures and so on) and they’d need rights in such suits. But again, just because there’s a law that says corporations aren’t to be assumed to have all rights, this doesn’t prevent some of them from having some rights in some circumstances. That would have to be hashed out in legislation and courts.
I think corporations should have rights to fair legal procedings, and should not have the same freedom of speech individuals have. (They should have some freedom of speech, but not the same freedom had by individuals.)
Probably, but I don’t think it would be a good idea. There are very good reasons for corporate personhood. Not the least of which is if you start a small company, you want to separate your personal assets from those of your company.
IIRC, laws regarding the formation of corporations are written at the state level.
Why, and also, why does that entail corporate personhood rather than simply rules about accounting?
It’s less about accounting and more about what’s at risk. A properly formed corporation only puts the assets of the corporation at risk during bankruptcy or other proceedings. In other words, they can’t come take your house.
Now, as for why you couldn’t fairly easily structure the law to retain that shield without granting a corporation personhood is beyond me.
I don’t see this. Freedom of the Press is explicitly mentioned, it doesn’t come from Freedom of Speech through corporate personhood.
They would have to pass a constitutional amendment as it would violate the rights of persons to assemble under the 1st amendment.
The freedom of assembly mentioned in the 1st amendment also infers a freedom of association in this country.
Thus people have the right to come together with other individuals and collectively express, promote, pursue and defend common interests.
That can be in several forms including incorporation.
Because that shield is personhood. A person is an entity that can enter into contracts and is legally responsible for its actions.
Corporate personhood - Wikipedia Corporate personhood was not intended to happen at all. It was an under the table deal by Bancroft who recorded the Supreme Court decision which was not supposed to do it at all. Bancroft of course was a railroad exec.
That related more to the incorporation of the bill of rights against the state.
The person-hood of corporations is a very old concept on common law.
You can find the following book online.
Book I, Chapter 18 of Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-1769).
Here is a direct link to
Book I, Chapter 18 of Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-1769).
Sure - but if the point of the OP’s suggested law is to say that corporations cannot claim constitutional rights in the same way as a natural person, then a corporation would not be able to claim the protection of the First Amendment. Only natural persons could claim that right.
If so, news outlets that are owned by corporations (and pretty much all of them are) could not claim the protection of the First Amendment.
Theoretically, though, the individual newscasters or reporters could still make the claim.
Note that historical writings and court decisions tend to indicate that the “freedom of the press” was written as a right to publish using the technology of the “press” , not a right that belonged to members of a particular industry.
Sure - but if Congress could pass a law authorising the expropriation of all assets of a corporation that ran a news organization it disapproved of, those individual newscasters would be out of jobs.
The Founding Fathers were quite aware of the corrupting power of corporate wealth and it would not be unfair to say that our revolution was in large part waged against the East India Company. See here.
[emphasis mine]
Corporate “personhood” is entirely a creation of SCOTUS’s interpretation of what? Not the Constitution nor its 27 amendments in which the word “corporation” does not appear once .
Before the Civil War, Southern agricultural capital gave counterweight to Northern industrial and the South had a fair hand in composing the SC. The question of corporate personhood began to arise post-bellum after the USG was firmly in the hands of Northern banks and industrial interests and in 1889 the SC finally ruled that corporations are people. ( The 1886 Santa Clara decision did not actually address the question of corporate personhood but it certainly paved the way for it.)
Irony? The corporation “lost” the suit but for the price of 3 hogs, ($24, a familiar bargain price) corporations were awarded personhood.
More irony? The next year, Congress passed the Sherman-Anti-Trust Act:) and wrote corporate personhood into statute.
For more information see
http://www.ratical.org/corporations/ToPRaP.html
I may have been skimming, but this thread seems to be focusing on ‘personhood’ as providing ‘rights’. However it also confers obligations on a corporation.
Such as the ability to be taken to court; parties can sue a corporation far more easily than having to go after each of the indivdiual stockholders for a portion of the suit value.