Talk:Corporate personhood/Archive 2

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)

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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

Neutrality

Is having an image of a protestor really a neutral representation of this topic? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 152.30.226.5 (talk) 17:53, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

I think it should be removed too. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.229.64.229 (talk) 00:39, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

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)

I agree that the history of this case and the subsequent interpretations thereof appear to be less than clear in this and other articles. If there are sources that substantiate the above claim that later rulings treated the Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific ruling as commentary on the Constitution, I would welcome these additions to the article. --Robthepiper (talk) 06:51, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

Opening section needs editing

"However, as interpreted by the the US Supreme Court, the doctrine provides corporations the right to secretly and with some limits - fund political campaigns. It is widely believed that politicians reward these contributions upon election. Furthermore, corporations, as such enjoy a kind of immortality and can not be jailed or killed, unlike "people" in the literal sense."

These sentences sound like they have been tacked on to the end of the opening paragraph; they are not neutral ("secretly", and the assertion that contributions are basically bribes which are repaid by politicians), and are not well-written (Furthermore .. as such, "enjoy a kind of immortality", "people" in quotes...) Needs cleanup/removal. 70.192.199.202 (talk) 17:44, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

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

2013-05-30: In PA the courts have declared corporations are not people according to the PA constitution. http://www.positivenewsus.org/new-civil-rights-movement.html, http://www.alternet.org/fracking/pennsylvania-court-deals-blow-secrecy-obsessed-fracking-industry-corporations-not-same — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.38.228.118 (talk) 21:24, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

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

I strongly disagree with 92.253.37.102 regarding the obvious bias and POV expressed concerning "money in politics". I see the "Citizens United ruling" as an attack on fairness, liberty , and equity. Non profit incorporated entities cannot be held accountable for their libellous acts perpetrated against those who would represent the position of a majority vis a vis the moneyed 1%. A corporate charter does not care if it is sitting in a jail cell or sunning itself on the Riviera. Such a corporate shell is merely a "legal entity" that feels no pain, pleasure, or remorse. Only living beings feel such sensations and thus can be discouraged and held accountable for their acts. In such incorporations, the human beings accountable for the libellous acts are protected from prosecution by the limited liability awarded to the stakeholders/financiers of the incorporated group. Having spent all the funds defaming a candidate for office (as was the intent of the organization), there are no funds available to the plaintiff when a suit for libel is won. Free speech belongs to those who will be held accountable for their speech. If all speech concerning candidates comes from candidates or from their official campaign entities, and all funding comes from natural persons who support a candidate, then we will have accountability, and perhaps, a lot more truth. I feel quite strongly that wealthy people will not put their assets on the line to run for office or to support a candidate that will make law in favor of the 1%. They will only do so if they can hide their personal assets behind a group/corporate shield. Candidates can be limited in their acceptance of money and in their expenditures and such limitations are not attacks on individual rights. No constitutional action is necessary but for the words: "The Constitution of the United States protects the rights of natural persons only". Such new law, if you will, does not repeal the current protections for the press, and the church. and assemblies devoted to seeking redress for the wrongs of the congress and the courts. Real "issue advocacy" is untouched by such an amendment because it falls under the "seeking redress" clause of the First Amendment — it is not an attack on a person — .These "groups" (church, press, and issue advocacy) and others are SPECIFICALLY mentioned in our constitution. I suggest we all review Statutory Interpretations, paying particular attention to "Plain Language", Expressio unius est exclusio alterius ("the express mention of one thing excludes all others"), and Generalia specialibus non derogant ("the general does not detract from the specific").The Trucker (talk) 02:14, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Citation 14 has no connection to the "fact" it is associated with.

Citation 14 is from an article in 2013 discussing the coming of the hobby lobby case.

The author has used this as a citation for the statement that the Supreme Court ruled that Hobby Lobby was a person. This on its face is incorrect as the Hobby Lobby court ruling was not until June 30th of 2014. It is also incorrect as the decision makes no mention in anyway that Hobby Lobby is a person.

128.244.38.5 (talk) 18:24, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

Dictionary Act of 1871 has relevance

A large number of court decisions (examples:[1][2][3]) refer back to the definition of person setup by the Dictionary Act of 1871[4] that includes

the words “person” and “whoever” include corporations, companies, associations, firms, partnerships, societies, and joint stock companies, as well as individuals;

and yet it's not mentioned here at all. It was crucial to the recent Hobby Lobby decision relating to a use of person in Religious Freedom Restoration Act[5] and AT&T, in 2011[6], attempted to use an argument based on the Dictionary Act to extend it's rights to privacy due to it's corporate personhood[7] Alatari (talk) 10:54, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

Dictionary Act compiled from many older statutes

Before 1871 all statutes had their own definition section and in that time it was all hand written and could amount to hundreds of hours of extra work writing out each definition section. A commission was formed to gather up the previous definitions and create a single compiled version. So the Dictionary Act is a compromise of various prior statute definition sections hashed out by committee. Obviously not all earlier statute's definitions were in agreement. The earlier statutes were revised by pulling their dictionary sections.The person=corporation was evolving many years before 1871 as definitions in statutes prior to 1871 which is a weakness of this article. A section on the compilation of the Dictionary Act maybe suitable as it was a hashing out of the person=corporation of years of statute definitions. All prior statutes have been amended with pulling their dictionary sections it will be hard (without seeing scanned in original documents) to figure out which statutes from 1790 to 1871 helped develop the Dictionary Act. Alatari (talk) 22:18, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

Corporate Charters pre-constitution

Unfortunately I cannot yet source this better, but Paul Cienfuegos presents this list of regulations to which Corporations were granted Charter were held to prior to the constitution, and it feels to me like this would be an important addition to the history of Corporations if it could be sources and cited (I have asked him for such). Not sure how it would best be formatted, maybe a separate link to perhaps a new article regarding the historical regulations to which corporations were bound. Of course, these regulations were intended to keep Corporations subservient to British Rule, but I think they are inportant from a historical perspective, and as ideas which could bind, if re-enacted, Corporations to the rule of the People. I dont know if such an article already exists, but I couldn't find it (any help appreciated). I only made one edit in brackets below.

• Corporations were required to have a clear purpose, to be fulfilled but not exceeded.

• The state legislature could revoke a corporation's charter for a particular reason, or for no reason at all.

• Corporate boards of directors and stockholders were held fully liable for all corporate harms and debts [Where now they are limited to doing a certain amount of harm by regulatory boards].

• Major corporate policy decisions had to be affirmed by unanimous shareholder vote, and the power of large shareholders was limited by scaled voting, so that large and small investors had more equal voting rights.

• Shareholders had the right to remove directors at will.

• To ensure local control and input, all of a corporation's stockholders were required to be from the state where it did its business.

• Corporate charters were granted for a specific period of time, like 10, 20 or 30 years, and the corporation ceased to exist after that time unless its charter was renewed. (Now they are granted "in perpetuity".)

• Corporations were subject to a debt limit established by the state legislature.

• Corporations were prohibited from owning other corporations in order to prevent them from extending their power inappropriately.

• Corporations' real estate holdings were limited to what was necessary to carry out their specific purpose(s).

• Corporations were prohibited from making any political contributions, direct or indirect (still a felony in Wisconsin until 1953).

• Corporations were prohibited from making charitable or civic donations outside of their specific purposes.

• State legislatures set the rates that corporations could charge for their products or services.

• All corporation records and documents were open to the public (or the legislature or the state attorney general). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.59.217.42 (talk) 23:39, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

Misleading and unsourced

The article starts with a very strong and unsourced claim that the legal concept of a corporation having rights and responsibilities as an individual (a person) is American. It is neither an American invention, nor is it currently restricted to the US legal system, as the article on Legal personality makes quite clear. People arriving at this article can reasonably expect a general overview of the status of corporations as persons in legal systems worldwide and a history of this status's evolution through time. Instead, readers are treated to a discussion of whether corporations as persons partake of specific rights accorded to persons in general by the US constitution. Moreover, this article unreflectively subscribes to the definition of "corporate personhood" as used by one American campaign group, whereby the status of being a person is confused with partaking of specific rights accorded to a person by the US constitution. This is all very misleading and, what's worse, not properly attributed — the US-specific debate is not placed within the wider context and use of "corporate personhood", and indeed the reader is left unaware that such a context even exists. The "In other countries section" in its current status would only reinforce the impression that corporate personhood is something severely limited, rather than ubiquitous. 83.244.221.6 (talk) 15:44, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

As an American concentrating upon fair and just elections within the United States I am not all that interested in the global nature of corporate personhood. And I am primarily interested in "the status of being a person is confused with partaking of specific rights accorded to a person by the US constitution". Perhaps we should change the title to "corporate personhood in the United States". Most of us are interested in repairing the damage done to this country by the erroneous conclusions of the Roberts SCOTUS. When the US Constitution says "abridging the freedom of speech" such words do not apply to corporations and other legal entities because these entities never had a right to free speech in the first place. And a non existent right can't be abridged. Only individual human beings have a right to free speech because only individual human beings can be held fully accountable for their speech in the civil courts. Groups of human beings are dealt with generally by asserting the right of association, to wit: "the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances". The right of association is limited to exactly what the words say and no more. Properly interpreted the US Constitution does not grant oligarchs the right to defame individuals seeking office while hiding behind corporate walls of limited liability. That is why the personhood issue is the crux of the situation. The courts may rule as they please until the legislature makes law to the contrary. And at that point the judicial branch loses to the legislative unless there is a true constitutional breech. The act of amending the constitution to address the problem is merely a dodging of the fact that in the United States, the legislature wears the pants. See Article III, section 2.The Trucker (talk) 01:45, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Deleted External Links section

I deleted the external links section because it appears to consist solely of links to POV websites. I believe removing it is justified by the following policies:

• WP:EL#ADV, because the links are intended as advocacy to attract interest to particular initiatives
• WP:UNDUE, because the links are all focusing on a position opposed to the majority view (i.e. established law)
• WP:ELPOV, because all links appear to advocate for the same side
• WP:ELBURDEN: the burden of proof is on those that want to include each link

Note that this point of view is already covered (briefly) in the Corporate_personhood#Corporate_personhood_in_the_United_States section. The links are reproduced below in case they are useful for finding further citations for that POV:

• ReclaimDemocracy.org Extensive library of resources on the subject
  • Proposed constitutional amendment to revoke corporate personhood
• Petition for Bernie Sanders' Proposed Amendment to revoke corporate personhood
  • A copy of the amendment (PDF)
• WILPF Campaign to Abolish Corporate Personhood
• Program on Corporations, Law, & Democracy
• Move To Amend and Free Speech for People are coalitions launched following the US Supreme Court's Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision that aim to overturn the Court's advocacy for "corporate free speech" via Amendment.
• Gangs of America by Ted Nace: free book on the historical and legal bases of Corporations
• The Corporation 90-minute documentary film exploring the subject.
• Corpwatch
• Corporate Watch (UK)
• Seattle Ballot Initiative 103 would strip corporations of personhood
• The Independent Fundraising Gold Rush Since Citizens United Ruling - video report by Democracy Now!
• A Corporation is not a Person, a Home is not an Investment from The Popular Capitalist View by Carl Peter Klapper, argues that corporations are governments whose scope of operations should be limited to the state in which they are registered and whose authority should be inferior to popularly elected governments.

2601:647:4101:4DA6:3078:2FAB:64E0:5E7C (talk) 03:29, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

Extreme Bias and Location

This article is so egregiously biased in favor the liberal criticism of the Citizens United US Supreme Court decision that I was compelled to log in to fix it. Normally, I would make slight changes without a talk page section but seeing as the overwhelming, obsessive compulsion of some on this talk page I'm going to just leave this comment here. The article appears like it used to be worse and was cleaned up a little. There are still ridiculous comments like declaring an entire Supreme Court decision "ipse dixit" or declaring corporate personhood a "convenient legal fiction" (the wikipedia article for legal fiction expressly states in its summary that "legal fiction" is primarily used in an offensive, pejorative way); there is no reason words like those are included in the article. The article clearly violates WP:SOAP.

I'm also surprised at the grotesque number of mini addenda after each paragraph. The fact that the article block quotes extensively from DISSENTING opinions, which don't set any legal precedent, under the section "case law," but does not actually quote any case law clearly violates WP:UNDUE.

Large swaths of the article -- mainly the soapy parts -- are also unsourced. Under WP:VERIFY I'm going to remove those.

Because some of the comments on this talk page have become extreme at things that don't include removing favored content, it would be best to find a consensus before any of my edits are reverted. Please reply to this comment and NOT to my edits.

Also, I agree with previous talk sections that suggest changing the title, I think this should be considered. It would fix the issue without requiring hours of work looking up the subject matter in other countries.

ImVeryAwesome (talk) 01:54, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

Incomplete sentence in "In the United States" section

There is an incomplete sentence at the end of the third paragraph of the "In the United States" section. The sentence currently reads, "While the Citizens United majority opinion makes no reference to corporate personhood or the Fourteenth Amendment,[5][6]" - the rest of the sentence is missing. Does anyone know what happened here?Brendan.delany (talk) 18:11, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

Corporate personhood vs. freedom of speech and right to remain silent

A corporate entity is a collection of people (managers / employees / directors) sharing a "vision" of an entity, including making a common agreement to repay its lenders (collections of people), and striving to provide economic returns to its shareholders (yet a further collection of people.) Similar to a folie à plusieurs ("madness of many") the entity itself only exists in the minds of those who interact with other people under the same "madness umbrella."

An individual person enjoys the constitutional right to free speech (1st amendment) and the right to silence (5th amendment). Corporate personhoods owned by public shareholders have greatly reduced freedoms in these areas, specifically as it relates to the operation of the collective corporate entity.

By so organizing they pick up formal disclosure requirements. There is an affirmative duty to disclose accurately, with strong penalties for failure. They must "speak up" periodically (in quarterly and annual reports, proxy statements, etc.), and fairly rapidly for all events deemed material (in 8-K reports and news releases). These forms of speech are hardly "free". They include meticulously prescribed financistatement tables, and accompanying narrative notes, all to be prepared in strict accordance with generally accepted accounting standards (GAAP). Further, they must provide numerous other detailed disclosures (including highly prescribed narrative description of the business, competitors, facilities, complete management discussion and analysis of the financial statements, officers and directors background/compensation, provide copies of non-routine material contracts, etc., etc., etc.) as prescribed in considerable detail by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

The right to remain silent is very different for public corporate entities, if it exists at all.

Item 303 of SEC Regulation S-K requires issuers to disclose, as part of management’s discussion and analysis in various regulatory filings, “any known trends or uncertainties that have had or that the [issuer] reasonably expects will have a material favorable or unfavorable impact on net sales or revenues or income from continuing operations.” SEC guidance clarifies that a disclosure duty exists under Item 303 “where a trend, demand, commitment, event or uncertainty is both presently known to management and reasonably likely to have material effects on the registrant’s financial condition or results of operation.” Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations, Exchange Act Release No. 6835 (May 18, 1989). https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2015/02/08/regulation-s-k-failure-to-disclose-creates-liability-under-section-10b/

It would be great to have experts in corporate disclosure law, and personal rights law, include a section on required corporate disclosures, and discuss what freedoms of speech/silence managers enjoy, when it comes to topics that may impact the perception of the corporate entity. Rick (talk) 18:10, 16 March 2018 (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)

Obviously not. Corporate personhood is a legal fiction useful for providing a framework for how to deal with fictional entities which consist of persons in the aggregate. Non-people cannot own property, for example, but it would be a terrible idea to try and make shareholders in a company each individually own every chair and desk and building and telephone. There's no way for inanimate or fictional objects to make contracts, but it would be imprudent to either have every shareholder sign every employment or services contract - nor would it be a good idea to vest all those contracts in a single proxy. Corporations, being made up of people, share some properties with people, and so it is useful to consider them people in some senses. Corporations are not people in other senses - they do not need food and water to survive, and depriving them of food and water would not be any kind of negligence. You can destroy them if you want and it is not considered murder. You can own them. Extending the personhood metaphor to those concepts would be useless and absurd. 0x0077BE (talk) 02:43, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

No more absurd than any other protection they have claimed under the Bill of Rights. They demanded and got protection under the 14th Amendment within the first decade of its passing; should not that automatically then include the clearly associated 13th Amendment? They seek protections under the 1st, 4th, and 5th Amendments to grant them legal immunity from being open and accountable. The absurdity is that they can claim ANY Constitutional Rights in the first place. The Bill of Rights is not a buffet, it is ALL or NOTHING. Either they are "persons born or naturalized" as their lawyers argued, or they are not. There is no partway on this. Either they are not persons and cannot own property, or they are persons and cannot be owned as property - in both interpretations stocks are invalid. "Slavery is the legal fiction that a person is property. Corporate Personhood is the legal fiction that property is a person.", both fictions are greatly harmful to democracy and the public good, despite their economic value. We declared a century and a half ago that we cannot morally accept the former, how is it we still indulge the latter? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.161.26.38 (talk) 17:51, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

I think the real issues here are that corporate-personhood is used to shield the primary shareholders/owners against liability for unsafe products and practices, allows them to file mass-lawsuits for collections and claim default-judgements without ever having to show up in court themselves, gable with other peoples money in a common-costs private-profits model, and try to force real people into mandatory binding arbitration- thus keeping the rights to own property and sue, while becoming unsueable themselves.

Which they get away with despite it being technically illegal. Contract-law CANNOT OVERRIDE municipal law, which cannot override state law, which cannot override federal law, which in turn cannot override Constitutional law- therefor, a Contract cannot deprive you of your Constitutional Right to Sue. You can agree, in principal or in good-faith, not to exercise said right, provided they have also provided a safe and reliable/fair-quality product or service as their consideration in good-faith. Falling short of that, they cannot make you waive your right to recompense for knowingly providing a product that harms you or makes you ill, or is otherwise of such poor quality as to not be a valid consideration for the exchange.

Also, to be a legal contract, in addition to both parties providing something of value/legal consideration, it is also necessary for both parties to have EQUAL SAY on the terms of the contract- the unilateral dictation model of Terms of Use/Service does not meet the legal definition of a contract/agreement as such. Further, in order to be binding, Arbitration not only requires a judge to sign off on the finding, but the arbitrator must be a NEUTRAL THIRD PARTY- and, as these corporations are repeat-clients of said arbitrators, they cannot be truly neutral parties. Neither can bank-employees provide notarization of any documents pertaining to that bank's business without being a similar conflict of interest. (Nor, for that matter, can state employees such as highway patrol be impartial witnesses... but then, as even the judges are on state payroll, what can we do to ensure a fair trial, besides insisting on our right to trial by jury in EVERY criminal case, and all civil cases pertaining to matters in excess of $20? Perhaps that is what is needed to bring these rampant mass-filed suits into check, demand a jury of your peers every time, and to face your accusers in court, as are your constitutional rights. Let's see how they manage to get a corporate-person, actual and whole, into the court-room for the trial; we will finally have a clear legal precedent of exactly what constitutes a corporate person, is it the conglomeration of all the employees, the buildings and assets, or just a little slip of paper which is unable to speak and as such cannot make accusations in order to sue... let us see the complete body that is Microsoft, for example, show up in "person" for the proceedings.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.115.134.208 (talk) 02:41, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

Slight corrections to intro, may need more revision.

I'm not sure if the detail at the end of the into was necessary to begin with, but I started with a citation request for the Kasky statement (it's very misleading and basically false) and added a citation and some clarity on Burwell (it also was misleading and not supported previously). Both of these should probably ultimately be removed or moved to another section. The Yar (talk) 20:23, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

I agree that the Kasky statement should be removed. Like 8 months ago, I made the edit to its current state. I didn't add the info in the first place--it was already there--it was just biased as written, so I rewrote it. After looking more into the case, I agree that both revisions are false. Your edit mentioned the Circuit Court; I was (and still am) under the impression that it was referencing the Supreme Court opinion. The Supreme Court granted Writ of Certiorari, but after hearing the case revoked the Writ and didn't offer a decision. There were concurring/dissenting orders that may have provided evidence for the assertion, but they were not actual Supreme Court decisions. One of the larger parts of my edit was removing block quotes from dissenting opinions, so it would be consistent if the original revision for the Kasky sentence to do the same thing.

ImVeryAwesome (talk) 02:00, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

I'm also just doubtful that it really is about corporate personhood besides sensationalist journalism and politics.

The Yar (talk) 02:41, 6 June 2019 (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)

What title would you suggest? Perhaps "Corporate personhood in the United States", or "Controversies about "corporate personhood" in the United States" which is one section of Legal personality? Dirac66 (talk) 00:09, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm not a scholar on this subject, but my understanding based on limited readings is that corporate personhood does vary from nation to nation. Moreover, corporate personhood in the US is a very controversial subject. One need to look no further than the dissenting opinion entered by Justice Stevens in the Citizens United case. If you read the entire ruling, you'll find the dissenting opinion to be quite scathing. Per the comment regarding how this relates to other countries, again, I am not entirely sure from a legal standpoint, but another angle of investigation would be philosophical interpretations of corporate personhood. I think this is something that the article is lacking. Perhaps I'll dig out some of my philosophy texts to add to the article, as the concept of corporate personhood is not entirely a legal one. -Robthepiper (talk) 09:11, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

In “most” countries a corporation is legal entity synonymous with its directors. The directors themselves are the persons legally liable for corporate actions. Tonyburton (talk) 21:34, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

No privacy rights for US Corporations

I was reading the DoJ's Overview of the Privacy Act of 1974. It states a corporation and organization does not have privacy rights:

Corporations and organizations also do not have any Privacy Act rights. See St. Michaels Convalescent Hosp. v. California, 643 F.2d 1369, 1373 (9th Cir. 1981); OKC v. Williams, 614 F.2d 58, 60 (5th Cir. 1980); Dresser Indus. v. United States, 596 F.2d 1231, 1237-38 (5th Cir. 1980); Cell Assocs. v. NIH, 579 F.2d 1155, 1157 (9th Cir. 1978); Stone v. Exp.-Imp. Bank of the United States, 552 F.2d 132, 137 n.7 (5th Cir. 1977); Corey v. USPS, 485 F. App’x 228, 229 (9th Cir. 2012); Arruda & Beaudoin v. Astrue, No. 11–10254, 2013 WL 1309249, at *10 (D. Mass. Mar. 27, 2013); Pub. Emps. for Envtl. Responsibility v. EPA, 926 F. Supp. 2d 48, 55 (D.D.C. 2013); Falwell v. Exec. Office of the President, 158 F. Supp. 2d 734, 736, 739 n.3 (W.D. Va. 2001); Comm. in Solidarity v. Sessions, 738 F. Supp. 544, 547 (D.D.C. 1990), aff’d on other grounds, 929 F.2d 742 (D.C. Cir. 1991); United States v. Haynes, 620 F. Supp. 474, 478-79 (M.D. Tenn. 1985); Utah-Ohio Gas & Oil, Inc. v. SEC, 1 Gov’t Disclosure Serv. (P-H) ¶ 80,038, at 80,114 (D. Utah Jan. 9, 1980); see also OMB Guidelines, 40 Fed. Reg. at 28,951, available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/assets/omb/inforeg/implementation_guidelines.pdf.

Jeffrey Walton (talk) 09:39, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

Personhood of Corporations

Legal persons or people are described and included the constitution consists of biological humans, a lifeform of such. To suggest a entity is of biological nature is unsound.

The vision of the United States and the overall plan of the nation was to envision a nation of people. The United States was not planned for anything anti biological of sorts.

Assuming a connection between the constitution and inanimate, non biological objects is corrupt and nonsense. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jjeromep (talk • contribs) 23:34, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

Corporate personhood.

If a Corporation is a person and that person left the United States for a period of time then that person or corporation has lost citizenship to the United States and would not be allowed to re - enter the Country. With the case of Companies outsourcing to Asia then coming back to sell into the United States. Each extension of product would have to go through immigration, each product entering the Usa would have to gain Citizenship. The assumption is corrupt to say corporations are citizens. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jjeromep (talk • contribs) 00:02, 20 February 2022 (UTC)