Corporations Are People - Origins

[homersapien 11,453]

Hmmm, seems like the legal precedent for this philosophy is kind of shaky:

 

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/03/corporations-people-adam-winkler/554852/

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

How a farcical series of events in the 1880s produced an enduring and controversial legal precedent

 

Maybe, just maybe, this insanity will be reversed.  But I have my doubts.

[NolaAuTiger 3,295]

50 minutes ago, homersapien said:

Hmmm, seems like the legal precedent for this philosophy is kind of shaky:

 

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/03/corporations-people-adam-winkler/554852/

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

How a farcical series of events in the 1880s produced an enduring and controversial legal precedent

 

Maybe, just maybe, this insanity will be reversed.  But I have my doubts.

What are your thoughts on Corporate personhood? 

According to research by C. Peter Magrath, author of a biography on Chief Justice Waite, prior to the decision being published in the United States Reports, Davis wrote to the chief justice in May 1886 to ensure the verity of his headnote: "Dear Chief Justice, I have a memorandum in the California Cases Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific &c As follows. In opening the Court stated that it did not wish to hear argument on the question whether the Fourteenth Amendment applies to such corporations as are parties in these suits. All the Judges were of the opinion that it does." Chief Justice Waite is said to have responded, "I think your mem. in the California Railroad Tax cases expresses with sufficient accuracy what was said before the argument began. I leave it with you to determine whether anything need be said about it in the report inasmuch as we avoided meeting the constitutional question in the decision."[4]

Thus, as a result of the headnote's language in the Reports, Santa Clara is seen as the case that establishes a principle known as corporate personhood.[6]

There is a question as to whether Davis' inclusion of the unconsidered 14th Amendment argument into the headnote was more purposeful. Thomas Van Flein, a one-time editor of the Alaska Bar Rag, a publication of the Alaska Bar Association, wrote a feature for the magazine's May/June 2003 edition entitled "Beware of those headnotes." Citing research by, among others, Professor Richard Behan, Van Flein asserts, "Some believe the reporter inserted the erroneous language on purpose. The question of whether corporations were 'persons' under the constitution was hotly litigated for over 20 years prior to this decision, mainly by railroads who sought such status—but perpetually lost in court. Professor Behan notes the reporter was a former railroad lawyer who had unsuccessfully tried to get the courts to establish the point he wrote into the headnote. Professor Behan believes that the reporter sought 'to achieve by deceit what corporations had so far failed to achieve in litigation.'"[7]