Corporate Personhood

[ExGeeEye]

Apparently, "corporate personhood" is controversial in some quarters.

All I can say on the subject is this:

Corporations are groups of people with common purpose.

[dare i call them collectives?)

People do not lose their identitiy as people, or their rights as citizens, by gathering into groups.

If preserving their rights under those conditions means "corporate personhood", then so be it.

Comments?  Disagreement, even?

[DumbAss Tanker]

It's a legal necessity for the corporation to act in its own right, without any one natural person having to put his entire worldly goods and future earnings on the liability line every time he signs some damn' piece of paper for a business, especially in our lawsuit-plagued society.  The technological world we enjoy was not built by mom-and-pop one-store operations, which is the alternative.

[thundley4]

Corporate personhood is not different than any other group organized to donate and lobby congress.  Environmental groups, unions are just two examples of corporate personhood IMHO.

[TVDOC]

Corporate personhood is not different than any other group organized to donate and lobby congress.  Environmental groups, unions are just two examples of corporate personhood IMHO.

It's only bad if you are perceived to be on the incorrect political side of the issue.....

In reality corporations don't have the right to vote, they only have the right to back politicians they deem friendly to their particular interests, or hire lobbyists to represent those interests, as many other groups do......I could never get the "personhood" allegation.

doc

[DumbAss Tanker]

Doc, it's actually how the law refers to them ('Legal persons,' which includes corporations and real people, as opposed to 'Natural persons,' which means only real people in the correct legal parlance).  I'm sure the Leftists seized on and corrupted the term from the Supreme Court decision on the corporate legal person's right to contribute to things that are in their own interests in the same way a natural person can.  The concept is simply that the corporation is a distinct legal entity from any of the people owning or operating it, and so they are not individually liable for the corporation's obligations...it could have been called a 'zingwhack' or a 'snurgle,' but the effect would've been the same, and it was much more straightforward when the law in this are evolved to just say that the corporation is a form of person and can make contracts and hold accounts just as a natural person could, but it is just not a natural person.

[thundley4]

..it could have been called a 'zingwhack' or a 'snurgle,' but the effect would've been the same, and it was much more straightforward when the law in this are evolved to just say that the corporation is a form of person and can make contracts and hold accounts just as a natural person could, but it is just not a natural person.

That in effect gives consumers a "person"  to sue for breach of contract, doesn't it?  That would be easier to do than suing anyone and everyone involved with running a company.

[DumbAss Tanker]

That in effect gives consumers a "person"  to sue for breach of contract, doesn't it?  That would be easier to do than suing anyone and everyone involved with running a company.

Exactly.  And not only easier, but better all around on both sides, since the personal assets of any corporate official signing anything would not be on the line every time he put pen to paper; on the other side, anyone suing the organization for a wrong would not be stuck with the limits of whatever the one official held responsible was personally worth.     

[TVDOC]

Exactly.  And not only easier, but better all around on both sides, since the personal assets of any corporate official signing anything would not be on the line every time he put pen to paper; on the other side, anyone suing the organization for a wrong would not be stuck with the limits of whatever the one official held responsible was personally worth.     

You know....I understand that from a contractual perspective a corporation gives a "personal" identity for liability and binding agreement purposes.

What I don't get is why liberals get their knickers in a wad about it.......it's not as though it's a new thing, been around for a long time in one form or another.

All this liberal angst spins out of the SCOTUS decision to allow corporations to donate to political causes (the final destruction of McCain-Finegold).......the decision simply places this issue back the way it was before MF.......what's the big deal??  It was bad law to begin with, that's what SCOTUS is supposed to do (for once).

doc