The Atlantic must be excerpted and linked.
Worth reading.
Are labor unions people?
You forgot a barf alert
It helped our business succeed, with no damage to anyone else.
A full glass, brimming over.
bfl
Somebody has not studied enough history.
“...Worth reading.”
UCLA Law School professor Adam Winkler lectures the hoi polloi from his lofty moral perch, on the ethical failings of attorneys and politicians 130 to 150 years in the past.
Adam’s conclusions boil down to, “Back in the day, these disgusting robber barons, and their execrable political lackeys, escaped punishment for transgressing today’s moral standards - which are incomparably more advanced.”
Nothing more than raging presentism from a Left/Progressive hack - a petty-minded SJW type plainly seething with frustration: members of the “oppressor class” who passed on a century ago are beyond harming. He yearns to punish them, but cannot.
Adam also takes jabs at the Supreme Court of the late 19th & early 20th centuries, for daring to nullify early social-reform legislative initiatives that Progressives tried to foist on the nation.
Corporations are like any other implement, or organizational structure. They have no moral agency of their own; individuals motivate them and drive them wherever they please. The results - good or ill - are the fault of the individuals, and nothing else.
Complaining about corporate flaws is precisely equivalent to blaming guns for school shootings. Or forks, for obesity.
Corporations have not ruined the country. People have.
Democrats do believe that Communists are People.
There are two types of "person" in the law: a natural person (a/k/a a human being, who gains "personhood" by the act of being conceived) and a juridic person (who gains "personhood" by a legal act of the sovereign who recognizes this fact).
The concept of a "juridic person" came from the establishment of religious orders (the Franciscans, the Dominicans, etc). Property, by even more ancient common law, can only be owned by a "person", yet one of the vows taken by a "religious" (i.e., monk, friar, etc) is a vow of poverty, where he/she renounces ownership of all property. Because of this dilemma, no person who has taken that vow could own a monastery, friary, house, etc., as it would cause the monk/friar/etc., to violate their vows. The creation of a "juridic person" resolved this dilemma because the real property (the monastery) could be held by this "juridic person" and wouldn't belong to any of the individual members of the religious order.
(Of course, I recognize that since the concept was established by the Catholic Church, there will be some here who will reflexively be against the concept)
The implications of this invention are profound, if you think about it. Yes, corporations are an outflow of the concept. But how many other things are legally persons? Think about any "group" who can hold property, either real property or personal property, in the name of the group. Anything from a neighborhood homeowner's association (who may own the neighborhood park) to the federal government (who owns 1/3 of the land west of the Mississippi).
And, by the way, with the right to hold property, the rights and responsibilities of juridic persons has also long been established in Canon Law (and, from that, outflowing into common law of most civilized nations) from antiquity as well.
Now that this so-called "professor of law" has been factually debunked, let's look at the motivations of these idiots who advance the idea that "corporations are not people":
This idea is being pushed by ambulance-chasing lawyers manipulating useful idiot leftists (a/k/a communists in all but name). How is this? Juridic persons (corporations) can not only hold property but also can be held legally liable.
As an example, let's say that your home is part of the "O'Malley Heights" neighborhood in Maryland and that neighborhood has a homeowners association, incorporated in the State of Maryland (thus, the HOA is a juridic person). Part of the HOA is that they have a community swimming pool in the middle of the neighborhood that is maintained by your monthly HOA fees.
One night, some feral youth from outside the neighborhood sneaks into the area, climbs the 8' fence around the pool, and goes for a swim. But he doesn't know how to swim. So he becomes a candidate for the 2018 Darwin Awards. An ambulance chaser finds the baby momma of this poor youth living in the projects 5 miles away and talks her into suing. He sues the HOA for $10M. The insurance company for the HOA recognizes that there's no case, but defending it would cost a lot of money, so they offer to settle out of court for $10K (rather than $10M). The ambulance chaser accepts the offer, pockets $4K, uses $5K to pay for the feral youth's funeral, and gives the youth's baby-momma a check for $1K (which she spends on crack). Not hardly worth the ambulance chaser's time.
Let's play the same scenario but without juridic personhood for the HOA. Rather than suing the HOA for $10M, the ambulance chaser files 100 lawsuits, one for each property owner in the neighborhood (since there is no corporation to own the pool, ownership is divided among the property owners). Each of those homeowners' liability insurers settle out of court for $10K each (with the theory that it's cheaper than going to court). That yields a $1,000,000 payday (split by the lawyer and the grieving baby momma). But let's say that a few of the homeowners in the neighborhood are elderly retirees who don't have liability insurance and don't have the savings to settle (or to hire high quality legal representation to defend their case). The ambulance chaser could end up burying these homeowners and wind up owning several houses in the neighborhood when it's all said and done.
Now play this scenario out if businesses could not be incorporated, but only sole proprietorships or partnerships. The only ones benefiting from that scenario, again, are the ambulance chasers.
The useful idiot leftists don't ever think about these things. But they are too stupid to recognize that they are being manipulated.
The next time a lefty starts complaining, ask them (honestly, not rhetorically or sarcastically) which they’d prefer
1) Corporations are protected by the same Bill of Rights and sued in the same court system as us (legally, “corporations are people”).
2) A different set of rights and corporate court system (with jury of corporate peers) is created to treat corporations as they should be (not as people)
3) Corporations have no protections and the sheriff can seize assets and shut down any business that competes with Walmart (or any business he prefers). There’s also no court system that can be used to sue a corporation.
There aren’t any other options. Unless the lefty is honest they have to answer number 2. 1 would mean “corporations ARE people”. Most lefties won’t admit that they want gov’t (at least not the sheriff) to be able to shut down businesses for any/all/no reason like option 3.
Then ask them how long it will take before the corp bill of rights is WAY better than ours and the corp courts are way more forgiving, given the lefty feelings on lobbyists buying legislation and serving as each other’s peers in court (and lobbyists will arrange for a jury of corp peers, not of people). The way it is now, legislation and rulings that protect corps also protect individuals (at least in theory and there’s no other theory that’s likely to be better for people).
I guess it is crazy but with the IRS, we have to file our personal taxes with the company taxes so maybe that’s where the idea came. I have a small business and I have to combine taxes so in away it is a person doing the taxes....me!!! I get their point about companies being a person. People who do not have companies don’t understand the tax situation and saying corporations are people is strange but it’s just ignorance on their part.
Corporations are legal abstractions, formulated to capture those aspects of personhood which they deem to be to their advantage while making no claims as to the rest. They do not have souls or emotions, for instance. Their longevity and physical reach often far exceed that of true persons, hence they are ontologically different than persons, whether positive law says so or not.