Talk:Corporate personhood

/Archive 1

Breaking: Corporate Personhood on US Supreme Court docket

the article needs information on this essential, timely topic, for overview and links see http://forum.colbertnation.com/tcr/board/message?board.id=politics&thread.id=12732

Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission

This case did NOT confirm, as stated in this article, "claims of a Constitutional right to contribute to political campaigns." It authorized independent expenditures advocating for candidates or electoral issues, but kept direct political contributions banned. I am excising that line. J1.grammar natz (talk) 14:19, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: moved over redirect billinghurst sDrewth 17:12, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

---

Corporate personhood debate → Corporate Personhood — Well, it's been 2.5 years since the move of this article to a name that several editors seem to dislike, including me! The referenced discussion at Talk:Juristic person appears to be missing.

In my way of thinking, the legal notion of Corporate Personhood is what is of primary importance to an encyclopedia entry, and not the debate. WP:NOTE WP:TITLE seems to agree, in several aspects, including the "narrowness" of the inclusion of "debate", the notability of the debate vs. the notability of the legal concept, conciseness, etc. -- Bill Huston ^(talk) 20:39, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

1. I think Citizens United should be discussed in the 'Other twenty first century developments' section. More content on its implications than the one sentence there would be useful as well, perhaps including the tens of millions of dollars already being spent anonymously through 'sell organizations' in the 2010 mid-term election, the first after the ruling. This would include how the anonymous donations work under the ruling.

2. The link to a Wikipedia entry on "United States v. United Auto Workers" finds no article.

Craig234 (talk) 21:37, 5 October 2010 (UTC)Craig234

post-Citizens United debate

The article should pay more attention to post- Citizens United use of the term because it has become a proxy for the issue of corporate electioneering expenditures. This implicates one of the most important political issues of our times, money in politics. Corporate personhood prior to Citizen's United was of minor practical, even somewhat arcane, concern. Therefore the new use (or misuse) of the term gives it substantially more importance beyond technical jurisprudential concerns.

The issue here is whether the term is being appropriated in a manner that could affect the ultimate success of those who have adopted the term as a slogan for the movement to exclude corporate money from politics.

Though advocates of the anti-corporate personhood Constitutional Amendment claim it to be the most effective means to reverse the ruling in Citizens United, it would not necessarily do that at all. The advocates' assertion may be based on a misreading of the case. Most simply put, Citizens United did not concern more than peripherally the issue of corporate “personhood.” Justice Stevens' comprehensive dissent for the four dissenters mentions the term only once, in a parenthetical observation that corporate "'personhood' often serves as a useful legal fiction." This fact is contrary to a growing public perception that the case made an important ruling on "corporate personhood."

Although the premise for the majority decision is somewhat muddled, the Court did claim it was protecting the right of citizen (i.e. natural person) viewers from censorship in ruling that corporations could not be distinguished from other sources of money-driven electioneering broadcasts. This rule of decision could easily be clarified and expanded by the Court in a later case distinguishing away any anti-corporate personhood Constitutional Amendment on the grounds that the Roberts 5 majority actually defended the rights of natural persons to receive electioneering communications from uncensored sources, not the right of corporations to broadcast the communications.

In such a situation the misreading of Citizens United as a "corporate personhood" case could have significant political consequences in wasting political capital available to exclude money from politics. 92.253.37.102 (talk) 16:46, 17 March 2011 (UTC) L Kachimba

The Santa Clara decision was NOT the Supreme Court giving corporations 14th amendment rights

"In the 1886 case Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, 118 U.S. 394, the Supreme Court recognized that corporations were recognized as persons for purposes of the Fourteenth Amendment."

That is false. In fact, the decision specifically said the court was NOT addressing the issue of the 14th amendment rights being granted to corporations, a right corporate lawyers had been fighting for and losing.

The history is much more complicated, about the court reporter - then a powerful position - inserting a comment into the 'headnotes' of the case, that were not in the ruling, about a comment 'assuming' that to be the case for that ruling.

There are books about this history, but the court had not ruled on the issue in that ruling. However, this was apparently confused, and later rulings began to treat it as if it had, and it became 'accepted'. This should be more accurately described. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.7.1.175 (talk) 18:16, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

How does "corporate personhood" jive with the 13th Amendment?

Corporations are owned by their shareholders. The 13th Amendment prohibits people from owning other people. If corporations are legally considered "people", doesn't that mean that it's illegal for their shareholders to own them? 24.214.230.66 (talk) 01:45, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Other countries?

This article deals entirely with the USA, except for a brief historical mention of colonial America. It would be interesting to add a section or sections on the status of corporations in (at least some) other countries. Dirac66 (talk) 20:17, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

P.S. I have now found brief mentions of Germany and China at Legal personality#Extension of basic rights to legal persons. Dirac66 (talk) 20:55, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

A corporation is a kind of person - that's what the word means (well, strictly it means something with a body) and the idea that corporations are persons is older than the United States. This article appears to be about their rights rather than their status which ought not to be controversial. Is "corporate personhood" a term of art in the US (meaning not what it appears to mean - i.e. the status of corporations as persons - but something quite different)? If so, do we have references for scholarly or official uses of the term? It seems an odd way to describe a discussion about which constitutional rights to give to legal persons. 82.68.102.190 (talk) 19:21, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

I disagree that it's not controversial, and if it is not controversial it is because it is largely unknown. Most people aware of it site the Citizens United decision in 2010 as its source in law instead of the 1886 decision (which itself is controversial because of issues listed on this talk page above and it should be addressed). The thing is, with actors like Mitt Romney actually putting it in people's minds for the first time and people educating themselves to understand the Wall Street related protests, it is going to become more controversial. It's not a doctrine that is automatically accepted outside of the legal community and it should not be treated as such. Secondly, this article is about the *U.S.* concept of Corporate Personhood and the box at the top is ridiculous. The article doesn't need to be changed, the title does. 98.223.65.209 (talk) 21:54, 4 October 2011 (UTC)